Competition and Stuff

On Friday I was catching up with a dear friend of mine, and in an effort to make small talk he asked me if I was following any of the March Madness Football.

Yeah. So I don’t really care for televised sports and obviously most of my friends don’t either (though even I know that March Madness is about baseball, not football--jeez). I’ve never been able to get into all the hype. But recently in one of my classes I was required to reflect on the nature of competition, and this led to a lot of self-reflection.

I played sports as a kid. I played basketball early on and then slowly transitioned to softball and baseball. My mom always forced me to try something at least once, and then if I didn’t like it, she didn’t push me to continue. But aside from pushing me to give these things a try, there was no more pressure from my parents. I can remember basketball games with other parents who would scream from the sidelines until they were blue in the face. I always felt so sorry for those girls as I watched them run up and down the court with tears streaming down their faces because their parents were never satisfied.

I didn’t need crazy parents to fuel my competitive streak, though. That’s the weird thing. I have enough of a competitive nature all on my own. I was a very aggressive defensive player. And if you tried to stop me or if you got in my way I WOULD THROW YOU TO THE GROUND. Remember, this is elementary school we’re talking about here.

I think transitioning to softball was better for me. It’s somewhat less of a contact sport…. But I don’t need a basketball court or a softball field in order to display my dominance. If you’ve ever played a game of Risk with me, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

The thing with competition is that I don’t think I’ve ever been competing against the other team; I have always competed against myself. If my team lost a game, I never really took it personally because, you know, it’s just a game. I was my softball team’s captain in 8th grade, and I was super encouraging to the girls when they were beating themselves up over striking out or not playing the field well. After all, we’re just here to have fun. But if I did something wrong, well then that was a completely different story. It’s amazing how my brain interprets a given situation. A strikeout? Oh. Guess it’s time to get “Loser” permanently tattooed onto my forehead.

My problem is that I’m a perfectionist who doesn’t believe in myself. That means that if there is a competition that I don’t believe I can win, then I won’t even participate. Perfectionists aren’t content to just get by. We have to be the best. So in my coursework, if there is an assignment that proves to be too much of a challenge, I would rather not turn anything in and get a zero than submit something that might reveal my inferiority. That’s how you end up with a “perfectionist” with a C average. It’s fear. I’m afraid to confront my own inadequacies.

If it sounds like I don’t know where I’m going with this, that’s because I don’t. I’m pretty much working this out as I go along.

Perhaps the real issue is my source of self-worth. I’m not even sure what standard I’m trying to measure up to, but I am slowly learning to accept that literally no one can live up to the standards that I have set for myself. If I’m ever going to be able to truly love myself, then I have to stop being my own opponent.

Birds and Backpacks

It is incredibly entertaining to watch someone else play Flappy Bird, particularly if they are not very good at it. They scream and curse and get all sorts of bent out of shape over it. For the longest time I refused to play the game because I knew that I would get sucked in like everyone else. But then one of my friends downloaded it onto my phone against my wishes. It didn’t take long for me to get hooked. The stupid, stupid bird just flaps and flaps until it runs into the green tunnel thingies and then it just plummets straight to the ground and lands on its stupid face and just lays there, defeated. It is incredibly frustrating--and addicting. But as soon as the game is over, you just hit play and start over with the next flappy bird, flapping and flapping with no real end in sight.

After awhile, I began to sympathize with the dumb bird. Yes, I am aware of how ridiculous I sound right now. But I mean, sometimes I feel like the bird in the game. I’m just doing the best I can to weave my way through the obstacles and just keep flapping for as long as I can. I don’t always know what my goal is, other than to just keep going. Sometimes, I do really well and I can keep flapping for a long time and I feel like a pro at life until BAM! I run into a metaphorical green tunnel thingy. Then I fall, and I fall hard. Other times I can’t seem to get very far at all without constantly running into some obstacle, and even the slightest problem that I run into can be enough to knock me flat on my face. Sometimes, I don’t want to get back up and keep flapping. I just want to lay there on my face because what even is the point?

Have I worn this analogy out yet? Let’s switch gears a bit. I was recently trying to explain to someone what my depression and anxiety feels like, and I believe I ended up describing it as a sort of cloak of darkness that I wear. But I don’t really like that because it doesn’t accurately depict the weight of the burden that I bear. After some thought, I decided that it’s more like a backpack that I am always carrying. On some days, the backpack is light and I am able to carry on with ease. But other days, my backpack is inexplicably heavier. It contains all sorts of things: my fear, my anger, my hatred, my doubt, my anxiety, my sadness--and so much pain.

I can’t take the backpack off. It’s always there. Even when it doesn’t seem so heavy, it’s still there. When it grows heavy, I can try to ignore it, to pretend that I’m not really carrying all that stuff around. But the charade can only go on for so long before the backpack gets so heavy that I can’t keep going anymore.

I have to unpack the backpack.

There are a number of ways to do that. Journaling helps. Friends help. Therapy helps. Pretending that I don’t have the backpack or all the things inside the backpack does not help. Knowing that I’m not the only one with a backpack does help. Knowing that the backpack will not always be so unbearably heavy also helps. Carrying around my Perpetual Backpack of Grief has made me a stronger person, and the items in my backpack also help me to be particularly sensitive to others who carry backpacks of their own. I’m still figuring out how to bear my backpack with wisdom and patience. I have a few wonderful people in my life who are helping me along. But I hope that someday I can be the sort of person who is able to help others carry their burdens, just as I have been helped.

I think that’s a goal worth flapping toward.

Why I’m Promoting Narcissism

Okay, obviously nobody really likes a narcissist, and striving to become one sounds like a terrible idea. I’m not really trying to promote narcissism with my blog. In fact, typing the word “narcissism” is already starting to get on my nerves. The reason why I use that word is because I like to exaggerate and use extremes. And that’s part of my problem.

I have a history of being way too hard on myself. I’m talking about some pretty intense self-loathing here. This was a pattern that I spent a lifetime developing. Old habits die hard. Especially when I am under pressure, my initial reaction is always to direct my anger and frustration at myself. Having the pattern of self-hatred so firmly ingrained into my psyche means that I have to work extra hard to break that cycle. I can’t just decide one day that I’m actually pretty great and move forward from there. I have to replace my old habits with new ones, and since my old habits involve taking self-hatred to the extreme, I have to be proactive about loving myself.

So when I talk about narcissism, what I mean is going beyond simply not hating myself. I mean having some self-confidence and allowing myself to be proud of myself every now and then. I mean offering myself the same grace that I allow others in my life. Basically, I mean loving myself as I have loved my neighbor.

I’ve always been taught to love my neighbor as I love myself. I think sometimes that command often gets misconstrued as “Love your neighbor more than yourself.” In fact, I once heard a lady from my church misquote it exactly that way. So I used to think that I should set my own needs aside and focus on loving everyone else. I had it backwards. I thought by being a good friend, a good sister, a good daughter, a good student, I would become a good person and that would make me more capable of loving myself. But what I have learned in recent years is that in order to love my neighbor fully, I have to first know how to love myself. It makes sense, really. Loving your neighbor as yourself isn’t such a great thing if you happen to hate yourself.

So I’m working on loving myself. That means ALL parts of me, even the messy parts. Especially the messy parts. It also means believing I am worthy of the love and respect I receive from others. It means finally embracing the knowledge that I, too, am made in the image of God--and that makes me pretty freaking awesome.