a marathon of a read
Well, I’m trying to be more honest with people. I also have learned so much about myself this past summer that I really want to share with you, I have decided to make a rather self-absorbed blog post. I will be less self-centered in later posts, I promise. So, I’ve learned a lot about my deficiencies in being with people. I will discuss these in parts.
1.I always assume that I am the least wanted person in the group
2.I need constant reminding that I am wanted and needed in the group
3.If no one’s talking to me, I usually assume the worst – like they don’t like me at all
4.If someone gets distracted in conversation with me, I think it’s because they don’t really care for what we’re saying
5.If people send me one word text messages a few times in a row, I usually assume that they’re annoyed or don’t want to talk to me
6.I consistently feel inferior to my closest of friends and feel like no matter who I’m talking to, they’d rather be talking to someone else (this is partially because my friends are so dang cool)
7.I generally am unable to receive any sort of encouragement or compliment because I usually think that they’re just saying things to be nice or to reassure me falsely when I bring up how I’m feeling
Whew. So there’s what I haven’t told you, friend, in the most factual and emotion-free way possible. If you can’t tell, most of my insecurities have to do with me assuming the worst in people. I also lean heavily on what other people think of me. I had never realized that I felt this way until Turkey. In an environment like Turkey where you have no one else but the 15 people you’re forced to live with for 6 weeks, you kind of have no choice but to figure out how you fit into the group. I struggled a lot in the beginning, especially because I was struggling a lot with feeling incompetent and inadequate to even be on project, and I couldn’t really see how anyone could even want me to be on the team. I walked at the back of the group a lot, I continually felt hurt when people seemed to favor others on the team, and I retreated to my own self-enforced solitude when we were at family dinners. It was pretty dumb, I see in retrospect.
The first time I really realized that I was doing this to myself was when my friend Peter challenged me to consider the “lies I believed about myself”, pretty much within the first conversation we ever had. I’ve been considering ever since.
At first, the considering threw me into a state of depressed confusion (I thought about putting confused depression, but that sounds so much harsher) and I dealt with it in the only way I could – drawing a diagram. I’m the kind of person who wants to always know why, and I also just really like graphing. What can I say, I’m a nerd. The graph started from “The Problem” and branched into Experiences, which lead to Insecurities, Relationships, and other assorted categories. I painstakingly graphed all of the things in my life that I felt could have contributed to the way I now felt about myself: past relationships and how they made me view myself, learned helplessness from some of those relationships, the responsibility of being the eldest child in my family, my genetic perfectionism, my parent’s divorce, moving at the beginning of high school, my history with dance, my struggle with body image, my performance mentality, etc. It ended up just confusing me more, especially because initially, I thought that from seeing all of it written down would help me to come up with a practical answer to The Problem.
It ended up just looking pretty hectic. There was no epiphany, no insta-fix, no magical moment where the veil was lifted and I started feeling good about myself.
There was no abrupt realization that none of the things I believed about myself are really true or a sudden acceptance of the fact that God will love me no matter what. I still have to remind myself every morning of these things.
I know that I have to wake up in the morning believing that this world doesn’t matter, but balancing that with the weight of the fact that IT DOES and that we’re here for a reason – to love the world as thoroughly as possible without falling in love with it.
I know that I try to love people as selflessly as possible on a daily basis and that it is impossible without God (1 John 4:7). I know that I don’t need love from people because God’s love is sooo much better than any earthly love I could feel (I dunno, the whole Bible). I know that I am not trying to earn the love and approval of men (and women), because otherwise I would not be a servant of Christ (Gal 1:10). I know that we are not of this world and therefore do not have to be consumed by the worries therein (Romans 12:2, 2 Cor 5:1, etc.).
Okay, cool. I know these things, I read these things on a daily basis, but are they so hard to live out? Why do I return to my patterns of caring so much about what people think of me or assuming all these terrible things about myself? Yeesh. Even in my friendships with people who I love so deeply and feel like I trust completely, I still feel this way. And this is all I’ve been thinking about since about the second week of project – and God has been so faithful in revealing the why. And through that, why I need Him.
I think the reason I can’t receive love and compassion from people on this earth is because I, to put it bluntly, reject the love that God showers on me daily. I don’t think I know what His love feels like, just like I don’t know what it’s like to be truly loved by my family, or friends, or any man I’ve ever dated (well, they were more boys than men, but whatever [sorry, Alex, keeping the tone light here]). That’s why I feel like I need constant affirmation of other people’s love for me. I can tell myself all I want that I don’t need it, but it’s not true. Believe me, I’d rather not feel any of these things and just love people all the time and not need any love in return – in fact, that’s how I like to operate. Loving people is so much easier than being loved in return – I don’t know if you feel that way, friend; if not, consider it a quick peek into the way I think (as opposed to the slightly more extended peek that this blog is). So often, I try to pour out my love for people as honestly and as deeply as I can and in the moment, I feel all right – it’s just later that I get to wallow in my self-pity. But hey, this part’s getting better. A lot of my feeling better in this much is realizing that we can’t love selflessly without God – like, not at all. How can selfless love come from selfish beings? That’s just more of a sidenote than an actual thought though.
So, dear reader, this is what I’m working on. Receiving love and believing the best. Even now, dear reader, I feel in my heart that no matter what you say after you read this, no matter how long the comment, no matter how many loving words you put in it, you won’t mean it. And I’m going to continue to fight that feeling and realize that I’m not writing this for your compassion (so I don’t need comments), I’m writing this so you understand me better and perhaps can love me nonetheless.
I apologize for the unjust expectations I have placed on you throughout our friendship and I apologize for the disappointment I felt when you didn’t meet the unrealistically high standard. All I can do is confess and hope you still love me, and give it up to God.
Love,
Always,
Meredith
I’ll write a happy one next time, I promise.
Hebrews 12:1-4, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27
1.I always assume that I am the least wanted person in the group
2.I need constant reminding that I am wanted and needed in the group
3.If no one’s talking to me, I usually assume the worst – like they don’t like me at all
4.If someone gets distracted in conversation with me, I think it’s because they don’t really care for what we’re saying
5.If people send me one word text messages a few times in a row, I usually assume that they’re annoyed or don’t want to talk to me
6.I consistently feel inferior to my closest of friends and feel like no matter who I’m talking to, they’d rather be talking to someone else (this is partially because my friends are so dang cool)
7.I generally am unable to receive any sort of encouragement or compliment because I usually think that they’re just saying things to be nice or to reassure me falsely when I bring up how I’m feeling
Whew. So there’s what I haven’t told you, friend, in the most factual and emotion-free way possible. If you can’t tell, most of my insecurities have to do with me assuming the worst in people. I also lean heavily on what other people think of me. I had never realized that I felt this way until Turkey. In an environment like Turkey where you have no one else but the 15 people you’re forced to live with for 6 weeks, you kind of have no choice but to figure out how you fit into the group. I struggled a lot in the beginning, especially because I was struggling a lot with feeling incompetent and inadequate to even be on project, and I couldn’t really see how anyone could even want me to be on the team. I walked at the back of the group a lot, I continually felt hurt when people seemed to favor others on the team, and I retreated to my own self-enforced solitude when we were at family dinners. It was pretty dumb, I see in retrospect.
The first time I really realized that I was doing this to myself was when my friend Peter challenged me to consider the “lies I believed about myself”, pretty much within the first conversation we ever had. I’ve been considering ever since.
At first, the considering threw me into a state of depressed confusion (I thought about putting confused depression, but that sounds so much harsher) and I dealt with it in the only way I could – drawing a diagram. I’m the kind of person who wants to always know why, and I also just really like graphing. What can I say, I’m a nerd. The graph started from “The Problem” and branched into Experiences, which lead to Insecurities, Relationships, and other assorted categories. I painstakingly graphed all of the things in my life that I felt could have contributed to the way I now felt about myself: past relationships and how they made me view myself, learned helplessness from some of those relationships, the responsibility of being the eldest child in my family, my genetic perfectionism, my parent’s divorce, moving at the beginning of high school, my history with dance, my struggle with body image, my performance mentality, etc. It ended up just confusing me more, especially because initially, I thought that from seeing all of it written down would help me to come up with a practical answer to The Problem.
It ended up just looking pretty hectic. There was no epiphany, no insta-fix, no magical moment where the veil was lifted and I started feeling good about myself.
There was no abrupt realization that none of the things I believed about myself are really true or a sudden acceptance of the fact that God will love me no matter what. I still have to remind myself every morning of these things.
I know that I have to wake up in the morning believing that this world doesn’t matter, but balancing that with the weight of the fact that IT DOES and that we’re here for a reason – to love the world as thoroughly as possible without falling in love with it.
I know that I try to love people as selflessly as possible on a daily basis and that it is impossible without God (1 John 4:7). I know that I don’t need love from people because God’s love is sooo much better than any earthly love I could feel (I dunno, the whole Bible). I know that I am not trying to earn the love and approval of men (and women), because otherwise I would not be a servant of Christ (Gal 1:10). I know that we are not of this world and therefore do not have to be consumed by the worries therein (Romans 12:2, 2 Cor 5:1, etc.).
Okay, cool. I know these things, I read these things on a daily basis, but are they so hard to live out? Why do I return to my patterns of caring so much about what people think of me or assuming all these terrible things about myself? Yeesh. Even in my friendships with people who I love so deeply and feel like I trust completely, I still feel this way. And this is all I’ve been thinking about since about the second week of project – and God has been so faithful in revealing the why. And through that, why I need Him.
I think the reason I can’t receive love and compassion from people on this earth is because I, to put it bluntly, reject the love that God showers on me daily. I don’t think I know what His love feels like, just like I don’t know what it’s like to be truly loved by my family, or friends, or any man I’ve ever dated (well, they were more boys than men, but whatever [sorry, Alex, keeping the tone light here]). That’s why I feel like I need constant affirmation of other people’s love for me. I can tell myself all I want that I don’t need it, but it’s not true. Believe me, I’d rather not feel any of these things and just love people all the time and not need any love in return – in fact, that’s how I like to operate. Loving people is so much easier than being loved in return – I don’t know if you feel that way, friend; if not, consider it a quick peek into the way I think (as opposed to the slightly more extended peek that this blog is). So often, I try to pour out my love for people as honestly and as deeply as I can and in the moment, I feel all right – it’s just later that I get to wallow in my self-pity. But hey, this part’s getting better. A lot of my feeling better in this much is realizing that we can’t love selflessly without God – like, not at all. How can selfless love come from selfish beings? That’s just more of a sidenote than an actual thought though.
So, dear reader, this is what I’m working on. Receiving love and believing the best. Even now, dear reader, I feel in my heart that no matter what you say after you read this, no matter how long the comment, no matter how many loving words you put in it, you won’t mean it. And I’m going to continue to fight that feeling and realize that I’m not writing this for your compassion (so I don’t need comments), I’m writing this so you understand me better and perhaps can love me nonetheless.
I apologize for the unjust expectations I have placed on you throughout our friendship and I apologize for the disappointment I felt when you didn’t meet the unrealistically high standard. All I can do is confess and hope you still love me, and give it up to God.
Love,
Always,
Meredith
I’ll write a happy one next time, I promise.
Hebrews 12:1-4, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27
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