Being Better...

I spent a lot of my life trying NOT to see myself.  See who I really was, am, would be.  I would love to say this all drastically changed once I got sober, but alas, no.  The difference between sober me and drunk me, is that I was just able to be a little more accurate about who and what I am.  And also, I guess, a willingness to change.  I am much more willing to change what I see in myself that is standing in the way of productivity, happiness, intimacy and the like.  When I was drunk, you just got what you got.  Yeah, I didn’t really love that so much either.

Sometimes I am amazed at how much I have changed and how much work I feel like I still have to do.  I had this thought the other day when I was overwhelmed with my own dysfunction:  “Maybe I could just stop.  I could just stop trying to be a better person and just allow myself to just be an asshole.”  I really did, for a few minutes, just feel like I could allow the darkness to just overtake me.  Stop trying to sort things out, improve, be better, work harder.  Evolve.  It is a lot of fucking work.  And in that moment, I was tired of trying and feeling like I wasn’t getting very much bang for my buck.

But, that passed and I knew that this whole endeavor to move towards the light was not just something I can give up on a random Tuesday.  Nope.  It is my path.  I don’t always like it but that doesn’t change that I know it is my path.

What I did walk away with, after my somewhat short lived insurrection, was perhaps what I am really tired of is always trying to be better.  It is exhausting.  I, instead, decided that perhaps I would just set my sights on just being me.  Flawed, imperfect, broken, healing me.  I just don’t want to be “better” anymore.  I am tired of attempting to live up to some standard I can never ever reach or where there is always more work to do.

I see myself.  I see where I am broken and healing.  I see where I have done a great amount of work, and all the many areas that I still have so much more work to do.  I know my larger handicaps and I know no matter how much work I do, there will always be more.

Instead of giving up the willingness to continue to work on me, I am going to do my best to give up this idea of “better.”  I am a pretty good person when all is said and done.  And I am really fucking trying to become this better thing.  It feels like the goal post is always moving and I don’t really allow myself a chance to ever enjoy me as I am.  I am too busy out there trying to be better.  And the better, is absolutely judged by standards other than my own, for sure.

I was walking through the airport yesterday and practicing noticing.  Just walking and seeing how other people either open me up or shut me down.  And I realized that how I see myself and how others see me is not the same at all.  And I am not sure there will ever be any kind of congruence in those two things.  I realized as I was walking through that I likely do the same thing for other people.  I shut some down and open others up.  And that is not be trying to do that, it just happens.

What I realized is that I judge myself by all this internal information when everyone else tends to judge by what they see.  And what they see is NOT what I am.  It is what I want them to see.  And if I am doing that as I walk through the world, so is likely everyone else.

Self acceptance is a hard thing.  It takes time and effort and resolve and grit and getting your hands dirty.  It often feels like a thankless task.  It feels like it is not all that rewarding at times also.  But instead of giving up the whole endeavor, perhaps I can just relax a little and give up the idea of becoming better and instead work on just loving myself as I am, today.  Not giving up the idea that perhaps there will always be more work to be done and the willingness to do the work, but instead, that the work will present itself, but I don’t have to get up every single day of my life and be better!

Being better is an exhausting standard to live by.  And it is never attainable because there is always more work to be done.  But being me, seeing myself as I am, that is doable.  And being able to sit with who and what I am today, seeing me and just doing my best to love and honor that person today, maybe that is easier than always trying to be better.

Sometimes, seeing yourself just requires you to own that and do nothing else but allow who and how you really are to just permeate without feeling like you have to do more.  Being better, at least in my experience, feels like a subtle violence to who I am right now.  Which will never be perfect but even on the bad days, is still pretty good.

Again, still.