Self-Conscious.
The hardest part of writing is that I have to articulate my thoughts. Writing forces me to realize most of my "thoughts," are feelings. What I thought I had to say is more tangled and abstract than what can fit in a single 500+ word post. Narrowing down my thoughts is like panning for gold. Somewhere under all the mud and water is what I mean to say. It might not even be that brilliant, but I still dance and yell eureka because I understood myself for a moment.
You can’t understand yourself just by thinking about yourself. At least, I never have. The greatest moments of understanding have come through actions, inactions, and creating something- especially not about me.
Thinking about myself only feeds the monster of self-disgust that has made its home in my mind. Thinking without doing always triggers a spiral of shame mixed with hubris resulting in self-destruction.
I don’t know how to build self-respect anymore. I’ve heard things from the internet like "Self-confidence comes through fulfilling promises to yourself." Maybe that’s true, but since hearing it my mind has fixed on the promises I haven’t fulfilled to myself more than those I have.
There is something so selfish in self-confidence. I don’t know that we’re supposed to be confident. The more I do the more clear my limitations and failures become. Confidence in yourself requires blindness. You have to decide whether to ignore your track record and assume you can do something you haven't done successfully. There’s a blind trust in yourself which I think is reckless. Maybe that’s a problem for me alone because I haven’t accomplished anything I’ve set out to do or hoped for most of my life. Sometimes I do, but on the other side, I find my own foolishness and ill planning rather than the feelings I had hoped for.
Toil is vain. I want to feel fulfilled like my life means something. I want to feel like I matter. I move too much for my personality, presence, or love to matter much to people. I accomplish too little to be valuable to people based on my accomplishments or usefulness. I don’t like myself enough to make up for this deficit in connection. I’d love to say I feel valued by God enough to make up for that lack of connection, but I don’t feel that way most of the time. I know he values me, but I want to feel like it.
The solution? I don’t know. I’m weary of to-do lists. More goals to strive for and fall short of. I don’t think I’m the solution. I think I am too close to myself. I need to get my eyes to look elsewhere because the only things I find in myself are vague feelings, conflicting passions, desires, and memories fractured and floating through a void filled with whatever my mind is consumed with at that moment.
Perhaps there lies a solution. What am I beholding? If we become what we behold, that is my problem. I spend too much time looking at myself as I am, not the One I want to be more of. I don't really want to be more of myself.
