I would quite easily identify myself as a perfectionist.
I’m not good with failure and I don’t like making mistakes. I aim to please, am a little obsessive, and like things to be ‘just so’…
Interestingly, if you asked me to define ‘just so’, I’d probably struggle, and if you asked me to describe “perfection”, it’d be equally hard….which is where this post begins.
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The light was fading and the drizzle still hadn’t stopped as I drove home past a guy, standing beside the A1 with a bucket of roses and a sodden, torn sign.
Sights like this make me sad.
At 5 O’clock on a rainy, winters afternoon, people shouldn’t be standing alone in the rain, especially when it’s Valentines day. It makes me wonder what the point of it all is, really; and whether I’ll ever make sense of what we’re doing here –
And then I remembered, as the lights changed, that we don’t really know the answer, and we’ll probably never get what it’s all about; but the thing that keeps it going is a little four letter word called Love –
Because, when all’s said and done, it’s love that makes the futile feel bearable and gives meaning to what’s mostly mundane; and, it’s the human connections that provide an anchor when everything else is a little hard to grasp.
So, instead of feeling sad as I drove past the man in the rain, and rather than feeling sorry for myself, as I headed back to my empty flat, I felt an unexpected kind of connection and a strange kind of peace with it all; because the answers to life might be totally out of my grasp –
But the point of it isn’t.
After last year’s bathroom tile debacle, I thought I’d got to the bottom of my indecision; but choosing carpets would suggest that I haven’t got there quite yet.
After a week of yo yo-ing between ivory and almond, and learning the shift patterns of the various Carpet Right staff, I’m clearly still struggling; but, this time, I don’t think the problem is knowing what I want – it’s living with the consequence that’s holding me back.
My head doesn’t do mistakes and it’s certainly not into forgiving.
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On those rare occasions when the barriers are down and it feels okay to move beyond what is normally said, then it suddenly emerges that we’re all just working with half versions of the truth; and, most of the time, we’re making up what goes in the gaps.
And, when we pause, unexpectedly, to find out whether what we’re thinking they’re thinking, is even close to what’s really going through their minds; and find ourselves, so often, on entirely different pages, then it’s immediately clear that we’re all just trying to make sense of a fragmented assortment of feelings and experiences and thoughts, reflected and refracted in a thousand different ways –
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For some time now, I have become a little anxious about the frequency with which the word “but” is creeping into my vocabulary.
“Should” has always been bit of a problem for me, but I’d kind of prided myself on my ability to problem solve and think creatively and take the initiative …
The realisation that I automatically see objections – rather than possibilities – is a little sore.
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With one foot in – and one foot out – of this thing that is life, I am only just beginning to realise the complexities, and the extent to which we are all just muddling along and trying to make the best of what we’ve got.
That we start, not as a blank canvas, but as a sketched outline, already shaded and shaped by the people that went before us – and those that preceded them; and, that the final masterpiece rarely resembles the vision but is, instead, a mishmash of the truths and illusions and feelings and experiences that we’ve picked up along the way.
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I have been going round and round in circles for the past month; and, regardless of the starting point, I still seem to end up with the same, unanswerable question –
Where do I fit in?
I am beginning to find the constant side-tracking a little frustrating now. It is rather tiring to keep reaching the concluding paragraph, only to find myself again writing the same four little words. Again.
So, I am changing tact, and moving the ending – to the opening – because throwing ideas around has always helped me to reach my epiphanies; and, hey, I’m going to find myself asking the same question anyway, so I might as well get straight to the point –
And then go back to the beginnings.
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Esme Lennox has got me thinking about madness.
We may not be able to lock people up as easily as we could 60 years ago, but the debate around power and freedom and what happens when you’re declared “unstable” still has currency.
I can kind of relate to Esme’s vanishing act.
It is hard to feel like a half person. When the discussion’s going on around – and about – you; you’re not always sure that you’re there and you’re certainly not sure that your contribution would count.
There’s something about mental illness that disempowers you in a way that no other illness can –
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I have been seeking approval. Again.
It’s a habit I can’t seem to shift – even if the guise keeps changing.
Whilst I’ve come so far, in so many respects, people pleasing still seems instinctive; and, the drive for validation that helped me to lose my identity is now making it difficult to work out who I am –
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I am learning to recognise my Achilles’ heels.
I have quite a few of these painful sore spots that, previously, would have driven me to bingeing – or some other equally destructive distraction – but I am now becoming better acquainted with.
The eating-disorder-provided relief was evidently a temporary fix and a bit of an illusion: the only way to sort out an Achilles heel is to tackle the source of the pain and work out what’s really going on – which is often something quite small that has festered into something quite big
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I stopped believing in an afterlife around the time I realised I was far more likely to end up in hell – than in heaven.
We’ve got an eye on death from the moment we start developing a consciousness.
It’s bound up in how we behave, and what we believe and how we live our lives –
There’s no escaping the subject – it’s just how we approach it that determines where the emphasis is.
Thinking about death can either ruin your life – or make it- and, after an evening contemplating the subject with Mark Vernon at the School of Life(!), I’ve decided that I’m going for the latter
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When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
An analytical mind is an asset. An over-analytical mind is a curse.
It means that you read things in to everything and tie yourself in knots trying to solve questions that can’t be solved.
Some things just are.
Some things don’t make sense.
Most people are far too complex to analyse satisfactorily.
My head is tuned in to minor thirds. It resonates with clashing chords. It connects, on some fundamental and physical level, with melancholy despair, with violent lyrics.
There’s a certain type of song that sounds like my eating disorder feels; that mirrors the despair and the desperation of my anorexia; taps into the violence and anger of my bulimia; and provokes an almost physical reaction – a stunned recognition – followed by an overpowering sense of sadness and pain.
I had an epiphany on the way to work one morning. Somewhere between St Albans and Hatfield, when Amy Winehouse had reduced me to tears, I realised what my response was all about.
Apparently, expecting the worst and sticking to generalisations are common negative automatic thoughts.
This makes me feel a lot better about my own negative automatic thoughts.
Therapy and cognitive theories aside, I am reassured by the fact that the thoughts have a name. It infers a commonality. It suggests that other people entertain the same ideas – and shared things are so much easier to manage than those that you’re battling alone.
It is, possibly, a little unkind to feel comforted in the knowledge that other people are also tortured by their heads –
But, it’s also easier to start changing thinking when you see the thoughts as patterns and not realities. It’s far simpler to challenge the mindset when you see it through the reflection of other people.
Getting to that point’s the harder bit – but another nice thing about a generic term is that you’ve got a handy checklist so you know what you’re looking for.
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I have been scared of the thought police for a long time. The notion’s not as fantastical as it sounds. It’s just a little more internal.
In Orwell’s fabulous 1984, the thought police are out there. In my experience, they’re in your head. We know what we should and shouldn’t think. We’re well versed in checking our thoughts and the cautionary ‘I know I shouldn’t think this but’ type of apologies; accustomed to self policing what we do and don’t say to ourselves.
It’s probably okay in moderation. It’s probably part of our development into moral and ethical beings; of learning where the boundaries are.
I just tend to take things to extremes – and it’s taken me a while to appreciate that your imagination’s a very different landscape to the one out there.
