Distorted

My head feels like an overfull oil drum. Like someone's smacking the side of it and the contents are sloshing and spilling out and raising such a clamor as to drive me batty. It's not a physical feeling, not a tangible reaction like a migraine, but it's under my skin and just won't go away. It's a symptom of my brimming thoughts. A doctor once told me it was my "unquiet mind." Apt.

I do what I can to balance it. This last year has taught me to face myself and look hard. It means I've got to be brutal in my honesty because if I don't understand the image in front of me, I'll only ever see the distortion.

And I have to wonder, how often do we only see the distortions? How often do we listen to the things people say to us—and about us—and accept them as the truth? The preconceptions of society? The offhand remarks? The slights—real and imagined? And what of the fears or doubts? Where in all the fog of wondering can we see the glass?

I'm learning to accept that I'm not for everybody. No one is. It's a simple truth and yet not a popular one. Because even when we can admit that not everyone suits us, it's sometimes harder to admit that we're unsuitable for others. Even when we know this and remind ourselves, sometimes a person will say something and it suddenly seems they're the only honest human on the planet and "they're so right about me," and "I must be a terrible person." Never mind the people in your life who believe you're worth knowing, worth loving. It's just that one person who's willing to give it to you straight.

That's distortion. It's also the kiss of death for a people-pleaser.

Yes, that's me, shyly standing up in front of the podium. "Hi. My name is Laura and I'm a People-Pleaser." I couldn't tell you how many days it's been since my last relapse because frankly, I'm bad with numbers. Also, it's a little hard to pinpoint when my last train of thought derailed—and my mind sort of looks like the graveyard where the Little Engine that Could went to die. Point being, I'm not always good at understanding my own thought processes and how well I'm adjusting them.

Retraining your brain is hard. I second-guess and over analyze and beat that horse straight out of death and into its zombified state. But I'm learning. I'm learning to stop. To breathe. To walk away and shut it out. I'm learning to replace: "So-and-so thinks that I'm [insert negative thing here,]" with "Are you better today than you were before?" and "What do you think about yourself?" Sometimes that means adjusting and sometimes that means heaving a relieved sigh and getting on with your day.

The fact is, my heart breaks to watch other people do this to themselves. To see them ferret out every flaw and examine it with the intensity of a theoretical physicist. To love someone who harvests all of the "bad" and sifts out the good, believing that there's so little good to be had. I see them and want to pull a Clarence & George Bailey so they can actually see how remarkable they really are.

I haven't wanted to post about the things swirling around in my over-thinking brain. They're the garbage thoughts, the one's that profit me nothing. But I have a hard time pushing them away. The only thing I can think to do is to replace them with hope. Hope that the distortion is wrong. Hope that I'm not as bad as I think I am. I tell myself to think about how many times I believe that God has shown His hand to me and whispers that we are so much more than we see.

I think about distortion and my reflection in the mirror and all of the unsuitable things...and how all of them are just the lies I tell myself. I may not be for everyone, but I'm something to someone. And at times like this, that's enough. Isn't it?