Personal Narrative – 344.5

Back where I started. I am on a new medication, which led to dropping one and changing the dose on another, and I think my body is kind of adjusting now. I will say that the best advice I can give is to not get diabetes. If you have any kind of risk factor for it, do your best to eliminate all of the other risk factors. Anyway, that’s not what we are talking about now. We are talking about Weltanschauung.

I think for me the most impressive part about that word is that it is in the Microsoft Word dictionary. I have a bad tendency to stick in an extra “g”, and it lets me know I am wrong.

I am not sure that it is the best word for what I want to describe. Paradigm might also work, but as far as I can tell both of those words are really more for groups. It is not improper to use it for a person, though, so we’ll stick with it.

The point is that we all have a way of viewing the world and sorting out information about it. I feel like it is more a story than a picture, so that is why I am sticking with personal narrative for the title. I am sure that some type of frame of reference is necessary, but it can become of a set of blinders. Sometimes we filter out things that contradict our beliefs, when possibly the correct lesson is that our beliefs are wrong.

I was thinking about this after the Virginia Tech shootings. Based on writings from the shooter, he really believed that all of his fellow students were spoiled rich kids wallowing in utter depravity, and my mind was just screaming that they weren’t. It’s actually the wrong question, because even if his analysis were correct, becoming consumed by hate and killing would still be wrong. I guess that was the part that struck me because he was clearly miserable, and it was based on this fiction out of his own head.

It was also relevant because we were going through another eruption with my older sister. Her worldview is that everyone is against her, although she is not homicidal, for which we are all grateful. Still, you cannot convince her that she has some responsibility for the way her life is. Twice when we were having discussions on this topic she has been told that she is not a victim, and contradicted it. Clinging to her victim-hood seems to give her a sense of importance, and it certainly saves her from having to do a lot of work, but it does not make her happy, and again it is completely unnecessary.

So, I am and have consistently been better adjusted than those two examples, but I have also had blinders on. Because of the two events covered in previous posts I saw myself as unlovable because of my weight, and really believed that it was all anyone could see. When I did not get asked out on dates or have boyfriends, I believed it was because I was fat, but now I wonder whether it was also at least partially because I believed they would not ask me out, and that such an idea would never occur to them unless it was as a joke.

If someone had seemed interested, and I could have gotten past the suspicion that I was being set up for fate like Carrie’s (minus the psychokinetic payback), my next step would have been to wonder what was wrong with him. Then I would have probably killed things with my inferiority complex, totally overcompensating and being subservient. Without my religious beliefs, I probably would have gotten into masochism so I could at least pretend I was controlling my pain. I am really grateful that those were instilled early.
Instead, I just became this nurturing friend type. I got my gratification from lending money and giving thoughtful gifts and sometimes baking. I was actually pretty popular in terms of being well liked. It probably helped that my elementary school fed into Mountain View, but they changed the boundaries so my junior high was Five Oaks, meaning that I knew a lot of people. I did a lot of activities, though I never held any leadership positions in them (bad idea if you want scholarships), and when I worked at McDonald’s fellow students would come in all the time, so I could talk to pretty much anyone. I just didn’t get invited to parties, or on dates, or any of those social things. I was voted most intellectual for ninth grade graduation, and I was glad of it, but I really would have liked prettiest eyes.

Honestly, with some of the stories I heard later, it was probably safer not being more socially involved. Drugs and alcohol and sex never even came up. Still, it was kind of sad, and it was hard to escape. I wanted to lose weight, but when you are doing it because you are trying to fix yourself so people can love you it’s a horrible amount of pressure. Once you factor in that eating was my only coping skill, you can see how it accumulates. My conflict was that I was always feeling that this scenario was true, and always desperately hoping that it wasn’t, and really pretty set against thinking about it too much anyway. It was easier to have a cookie.

At times there were things that gave me pause. For one thing, I always was against having people fix me up, because I just knew it would always be a fat guy, and I didn’t want that. However, Karen once told me she had thought about fixing me up with a coworker that I had found really attractive. The reason she didn’t was because he was fond of alcohol and cigars, which is a turnoff for me, not because of my heft. Jennie once invited me to dinner with a friend of her husband’s, and the situation did kind of scream “set-up”, and he was also perfectly eligible. My friends thought better of me than I did, but it was still easy for me to think that they were delusional.

Another moment I remember was when another friend was getting married, and I bought her some lingerie, which my sisters made me exchange because it was too small. They swore we needed a 3X, which was my size. I couldn’t believe she was that big. She didn’t seem to be my size. I didn’t think anyone was my size, but there it was.

Probably the moment that was most fun was when my sisters and I were discussing a friend of theirs that was also very considerate, always doing thoughtful things and bringing little things, and I was saying how she was doing it to compensate for her own insecurity, and it was nice but it would be better for her if it was coming from a place of strength instead of weakness, and then I got this funny feeling, like I was a hypocrite, but I really was nice from a place of strength, and I was totally not overcompensating. It all came back to haunt me later.

So I was wrong about myself, and it made me wrong about others too. My mother did nag about my weight at times, but probably not as much as it seemed. My friends did not find me physically repulsive. I don’t know if there were boys who liked me, but it I can believe that it was possible. I hated going on job interviews because new people see you, but I almost always got the jobs I really wanted (of course, none of them were modeling jobs). I just did not allow myself to see these things, and kept my field of vision tightly controlled.

My point with this is that it is vitally important to be able to open your mind to other possibilities. I don’t know that it would have been possible for me to not get messed up in the specific way that I did. Dad could never be wrong, and somehow I think that led me to believe that people hate you and are mean to you when you mess up or are weak. I did not realize this until I was 21 and out in the mission field, and my companion began to really despise herself because I was always right and it made her feel inferior, and we had to work that out, and I came to learn that sharing weaknesses can be really helpful to others.

Mom was raised that you correct faults in children, and you brag about them to others, but complimenting them to their faces and confirming your love for them isn’t really necessary. It is not child abuse, and I love her a lot, but I feel like that was not ideal for me. Then, the first time Dad cheated on her, when I was nine, I felt a real need to protect her and take care of her, and I was probably too young for that. I don’t think I really went through normal teenage rebellion with her, though I may have covered that in my mid-twenties.

Of my siblings, my brother kind of ignored me (he was seven years older, and the only boy with four girls, which was not easy for him), my older sister resented me from birth for displacing her as the youngest and as the only girl, and although I am close to my younger sisters now, it took us a while to get there. They are five years younger, and as twins were pretty self-sufficient. I was lonely, and the first few girls of my age that were potential playmates were fairly bratty. I didn’t have a best friend until third grade. I’m just really lucky Jennie’s family moved here, or it probably would have been a lot longer. From first through fourth grade the queen of the girls was Suzy, and then Michael displaced her, but neither of them liked me. We did shop at K-mart, and sometimes Goodwill too, and there are always things that other kids can criticize you for.

This is not supposed to be a pity party, but it is just a list of ingredients that made it fairly easy for me to be susceptible the way that I was. I have mentioned before that under the 9 personality types model, I am a people pleaser. What I did not specify was that the underlying emotional wound for that is shame, and yes, I always had this sense that I was not good enough, and that I was bad.

So, I don’t necessarily think that I could have avoided getting to where I was at fourteen. It does seem that it should have been possible to snap out of it sooner. If I had been willing to shine a light into the dark corners, and find the truth of things, well, the truth does actually set you free.

This is why the open mind is important. You need to be able to see when you are wrong, especially when it is hurting you, and leaving you open to hurting others. We need to pay attention to what is going on, and take times for quiet contemplation, and we need to be brave because some things seem like they will really hurt, even if in the end dealing with them hurts a lot less than not dealing with them.

It was probably easy for me to avoid this showdown because I really was very functional. I would just get these dark periods about twice a year when a little thing would set me off and I would be angry at everything, but really just about not feeling loved, and I would fight with my mother and in about three days it would pass and I would be okay again, and I would not seem like a doormat because I cracked a lot of jokes and I did have some spirit, but I was not taking care of the most important things.

Really, what I was doing was building up pain until it could not be contained anymore, having some slip out, and then regaining control, putting the cover back over the hole. Next time will be about when I lost the cover.