The glee club

I have soliloquies going on in my head (mind? brain? imagination?) pretty much non-stop.  And because I figure I'm probably like everyone else, I assume you do, too.  These un-throated voices have been given lots of names: old tapes, itty bitty shitty committee, etc.  I call mine the glee club.

While these voices address an infinite number of topics, there are prominent recurring threads which have been with me my whole life.  They are:

1) I'm ugly, fat, stupid, old, a worthless idler, a fraud.

2) I'm special.  I'm capable of special things, I'm meant to do special things.

These feel very, very personal, of course, but I'm also guessing they are fairly generic and that most people have some version of both.  But I'm curious about that.  What does Trump say to himself?  I'm thinking that if he has only one of those voices, it's probably loud and fierce, and it's a toss up which one it might be.  What were the messages my dad gave himself?  He was clearly wrestling with demons he wasn't able to talk about.  What were his inner soliloquies?  The woman at the bus stop, the grocery clerk ringing up my produce, the daughter of my friend who died.  What do they think about?  Not the conscious thinking of "here's what I'm doing, here's what I'm going to do", but the sometimes insidious, constant background chatter that tells us who we are and what we are or are not worth.

3)  This one is a question, The Question.  Everyone has a central question, a question that is never answered and the asking of which defines us and guides our actions, our choices, our entire journey.  The Question is always particular to each person.  "Am I winning?"  "Can I trust you?"  "Am I safe?"  Mine is "Do you still like me?"  Not "Do you like me?", because I've always known I could get people to like me.  But it's fear of losing that affection, that amity, that haunts me.  It has caused me to hang on to and keep feeding friendships which are no longer alive.  It causes me to spend hours and hours on email every day (I guess the way some people are on social media).  It eats up Christmas, which, since I stopped giving and receiving presents,  has become a time of writing and mailing soooo many cards, even to those people with whom my only connection is that once-a-year hello.  In the past, it has inspired me to make myself the center of attention in every classroom and party.  Since people might not still like me if they knew my true self (see #1), I would at least make sure they found me entertaining and amusing.  (I can see now that I may have been exhausting to be around.)  

Since uncovering that question, pulling it to the surface so that I can work with it instead of simply being driven by it, I find I am more able to calm down and allow people to take me or leave me as they will.  I don't want my whole life to be about being liked.  There are so many more fruitful pursuits than that.  I accept that some people will, indeed, stop liking me at some point, and some will even actively dislike me, as difficult as that is to believe.

One of the most important steps in maturation is taken when we stop defining ourselves by what parents, teachers, friends, our culture tell us we are and begin deciding for ourselves what we want, what we can do, where we are going.  Another step is to stop letting those internal voices define us.  They will always be there; at this point I have no reason to think they'll disappear.  But I don't have to listen to mine, don't have to believe them.  Whether I'm stupid or special doesn't matter.  I just am who I am, I do what I do, I behave how I behave, I improve in the ways I am able to, I indulge in weaknesses sometimes.  I am responsible for myself.

I'm still intensely curious about you.