Ed and That Old Green Man

I’m thinking today about how we never know how others perceive us or how people we used to know perceived us.

I’m thinking today about that Old Green Man low self-esteem.

I’m reading two books currently: Party of One – The Loners’ Manifesto is by my bed and The Introvert Advantage – How to Thrive in an Extrovert World is in my desk drawer at work.

I’ve understood for a long time now that I am someone who recharges my batteries by being alone. I treasure my friends, but being in their company costs me energy. I learnt a while back that if I’m going to spend time around people, I need to start banking the energy beforehand with lots of solitude and block off another chunk of time on the calendar immediately after the event in order to recover.

What I did not realize until reading The Introvert Advantage is that in being introverted, I am outnumbered in society 3 to 1. That is one more category I can add to those that put me in a minority. Aspergerish, I was a weird and spacey child. IQ-wise, I am in the 98th percentile. Yet I wasn’t singled out for the honours classes nor a gifted program. Some of my teachers thought I was delayed. One became repeatedly angry with me for hiding behind my long hair and for not responding or for mumbling when asked a question. I consistently forgot to do my homework, forgot to take it home with me or–if I remembered that much–forgot to bring it back again.

From Rufus I am learning that shy does not equal loner. There are shy extroverts–what a painful lot theirs is! And while social anxiety can be overcome, introversion is a temperament. Introversion / Extroversion is also a continuum and constantly in flux. In any case, to add to my being trapped in a world of extroverts with their social expectations of what makes a child (or any person) healthy and normal, I had the stamp of trauma from my father’s death branded into my psyche at age 6.

Sizzle.

No father in the house until psychopathic step-father who was constantly trying to grope me or get me drunk and kiss me.

Sizzle.

No strong woman role model in the house, rather my introverted mother with her own social anxiety.

Sizzle.

Is it any wonder I felt like a visitor from another planet?

I am thinking today about Patti Digh’s essay Heart Unlovable People.

I had to laugh at the question that bounced around my head after reading that essay and her article in Skirt. What have I done to love the unlovable people in my life?

Sorry, I misspoke. I didn’t laugh at the question. I pondered it for a moment and laughed when I realized the answer. I married them.

After 3.5 years of Jungian Analysis, Anna and I were winding up a session one day and were talking about the blind spot each person has…that area where they cannot see something about themselves…something many others probably can see fairly easily. I knew there was a reason our defence mechanisms keep this something hidden from us and therefore I had never asked Anna outright to tell me what she saw in my blind spot.

Until this day. I asked her. I just asked her, “do you know what is in my blind spot?”

She smiled in that loving way that is tinged both with humour and sadness and replied, “maybe it is your tendency to identify with the underdog.”

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I had a good friend once with whom I used to spend hours talking. She also struggled with self-esteem issues, though she did not call it that. She rejected all popular psycho-babble in favour of her own organic terminology. I could use words like “rooted” or “grounded” or “energy” with her, but not the C word (co-dependent). I wanted to recommend to her the self-help books that had helped me overcome challenges just like hers, but she had such a visceral negative reaction to them that she could not use them.

One day she was telling me about a time when the owner of the spa where she was a massage therapist ended up on her table for a one-hour massage. This was a difficult woman who was never satisfied with anything. When the massage was over, the owner told my friend that is was incredible, that it was BY FAR the best massage she had ever had in her life, including massages she had had in Sweden and Italy.

“My camera is broken,” is what my friend said to me. If each person has a little camera aimed at themselves through which they perceive what they are like, then hers was not functioning properly. That was her organic way of grasping her self-esteem problem.

It takes a long time… a lifetime, perhaps… to bring those aspects of ourselves out of the blind spot.

And when you get that information and live with it in your heart long enough to understand its implications, what will you do with it?