Today I'm a human being, someone with many flaws and many weaknesses I haven't wanted to pardon myself for. I have been a hard critic, self loathing, miserable. And recently something amazing happened. I thought of myself, of my problems and I felt empathy. It's been easy up until now to look at the child I was and feel compassion but for the adult I am I haven't cut any slack. I may have been a great defense attorney for myself all of these years but I've never rewarded myself with the understanding that I would have given to anyone else that I love. Then one day I thought "You are this way for a reason". And it clicked. I was human, my flaws were forgivable. Wow. That's a HUGE fuckin' relief. The way I've lived is as a neurotic people pleaser, with concrete loyalties and a self righteous streak that has crippled me. I've been slowly training myself to be more objective. I feel like a kid that's learning the art of socialization and it hasn't been easy. In fact sometimes it just plainly and simply hurts. The thing about me is that I get short sighted when it comes to people that I care about---I get a superman complex. I can fix it! I can fight it! I can save them! But how the fuck can I save anyone else when I can't even save myself? When I am constantly beating myself down for real and fictitious failures in my life?
I'm an asshole, that much I will admit. I'm a dirty, old, pissed off man stuck in a 30 year old woman's body. But I'm also a few other things. I'm child-like, I have a streak in me that lets me engage other people in ridiculousness and I think it carries people sometimes. I have a huge heart, all I need is a good sob story to get my mind going and my body moving on ways to help. I'm such a fucked up mess that has enough life experience that I can relate to a lot of people because in a lot of different cases because I have really, truly been there. I don't harshly judge the people I love because I love them and I offer that pretty openly. There isn't much I wouldn't do for the people I love. In fact there isn't much I wouldn't do for people I loathe if they come at me from the right angle. I often put my own inconvenience to the wayside to help people if the situation seems dire enough, as long as they seem sincere. And I will also admit: I am one HELL of a cheerleader. I genuinely want good people to succeed, whether I know them well or not. I'm a good person to tell your problems to because generally it will never go any further and I can offer decent advice. Because I care. And I will never pussy-foot around the truth just because you are my friend. I will tell you what I honestly think because I think that when you really love people you take the risk of making them mad if the point I make might drive them to improve their life.
So there it is. I'm admitting I'm a decent human being. And this is new to me. I've made a lot of mistakes and have hurt people when I really would have rather not. But I can't change any of this now. I can only try to be a better person. So I guess the state I am in is forgiving myself. I am only human and much of this I've had to learn on my own, the harder way. I'm doing ok. Because I'm growing.
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