I exist and that’s okay

I exist and that’s okay;
I am meant to be.
I needn’t fight the universe –
It’s not fighting me.

Last night at DBT, we spent a good portion of the meeting discussing a list of questions and comments I’d emailed to the leader, Denise (not the Denise who does my psychiatric evaluations). She thought it would be more useful to open it up to the group instead of answering me privately.

This gets to my thing about wanting attention and not knowing how to handle it.

During the meeting I had this feeling of protruding, like a bump in a sidewalk, and that I needed to flatten out and become invisible. (Concrete items: talking too much, shifting position too much, reacting too much, making too much noise like when digging in my purse for my glasses case.) I often feel this way in groups, and sometimes even with just one other person. It may be one reason I am more comfortable playing background music at the farmers market than playing a solo concert to a paying audience.

I think it wasn’t until near the end of the meeting that I realized this is just another example of my central inner conflict — part of me is desperately fighting to become a self, to feel allowed to exist, but another part of me thinks it’s not allowed to stick out.

To the one part, everything is a threat, including the other part. (The other part really is a threat… and perhaps that’s what makes everything else seem threatening.)

Not everybody wants me to disappear. Not everyone wants me to be smoother and unobtrusive. Some people might… but not everyone.

Even the people who love me most will be annoyed at me sometimes (my reaction is to feel hard and sharp-edged), and will sometimes not be in a good mood themselves (my reaction is to feel it has something to do with me). That doesn’t devalue or negate their love.

It seems the biggest threat to my Self, my Life, is from inside; from the equal and opposite reaction to my fight to be, from my black-and-white interpretations of and reactions to other people and circumstances.

Critical self,
You who want to do what you think will
Make people like me,
Protect other people’s feelings,
Soothe the universe’s affront at my existence –
You would make me palatable
By making me nothing;
By making me move only
In ways that affect no one.

You can’t escape the fact that I exist,
That I am indeed a self,
And that I therefore protrude
As much as all the other selves,
And that that’s okay.

Let me learn how to protrude
More gracefully,
More beautifully,
More truly;
To take down the fences and barbed wire and cut glass –
The deliberate sharp-edged awareness of sticking out –
Without taking down the rest of me.

I am especially grateful to the young woman who encouraged me to trust my instincts when I feel the need to fight or when I sense hostility or at least unlovingness from someone; that sometimes it is good and necessary to fight, and to recognize real threats. I don’t have to believe that everyone is dedicated to my wellbeing any more than I have to believe that everyone is out to get me. I don’t have to believe all fights are wasted energy any more than I have to believe that all fights must be continued.