Insecurities in the key of me.
Feb. 23rd, 2003 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoweeA "train of thought" posting:
I’m insecure. What a statement because, like, duh, aren’t we all? I think I’m stupid and I have a tendency to only hear when I’m being stupid. I look around and see a bunch of brilliance surrounding me – people well educated who quote Voltaire and people who just get life the way I don’t and I admire at the drop of a hat because if I do, in my mind, I’ll somehow manage to soak it all up – soak it all in.
Which is my greatest desire. I feel incredibly inadequate in every way, shape, and form and this is something that has gone on in my life for – as long as I can remember. My overwhelming insecurities and feelings of inadequacy are, surely, a big part of why I spent my teen years miserable. Stupidest damned fight I ever had in my life… ok, well, maybe not the stupidest fight in my life, but the dumbest one I had with my sister was because I was jealous of her intelligence. I wish I was kidding to admit that, but she’s so smart and she totally gets it and I… don’t. I come from a smart family. They’re all so… brilliant when they want to be and then there’s me who struggles constantly just to feel like my contribution to any given conversation is something more than superficial.
I want depth. I desire knowledge. I think I wanted to write since I came out of the womb because before I learned cursive, I wrote a story about a girl who made friends with a pegasus. It’s not just that I wrote it, but that I remember it and to this day hold it dear. I wrote all kinds of images and stories that came into my head and while most of them have been lost to garbage cans and fireplaces over the years, they’re all still here. You think I’m pointing at my head? {shaking head} I’m pointing at my heart because even now, I hold this endeavor so dear. I breathe it. It’s always been in me.
Yet the part that hurts is that after years of trying and years of criticism from those I allowed to read my stories, years of trying to improve and learning to deal with the pain of not measuring up, all I still see is that I’m stupid. I don’t get it. I don’t want to just write a story that’s ok and a fun read. I yearn to write something that makes people think, feel, react. I want someone to read it and cry, but then to think about it six months later and think “There was just something in there that made me understand someone differently, made me understand a situation differently because I saw them through this character or this author’s eyes.”
But that doesn’t happen in real life, supposedly, as I keep being reminded – except it does. People talk in depth about the psychology and beauty and uniqueness in certain exception works out there. In my head I can see it and where I want to be and how perfect I want it to be, but there’s this gap between what I want and what I’m capable of doing. The road to getting there is long and tedious and all I see in my way is insecurity and stupidity and inadequacy.
So I read and I write and I listen to people and I observe and I watch documentaries and dramas with the eye of how the writer was inspired to create this character and the motivations of such characters and I don’t know any other way to make myself better, but I’ve worked my ass off trudging through history books, psychology texts, mysteries, blah blublah blah blah, and I’m still not smart enough or good enough to see that what I see as perfection or that the desires I have are either unattainable for the world or just unattainable for me.
And I cry because I’ll never measure up to expectations that are far too high for any real human to exist. Or maybe they’re just too high for me.
I’m insecure. What a statement because, like, duh, aren’t we all? I think I’m stupid and I have a tendency to only hear when I’m being stupid. I look around and see a bunch of brilliance surrounding me – people well educated who quote Voltaire and people who just get life the way I don’t and I admire at the drop of a hat because if I do, in my mind, I’ll somehow manage to soak it all up – soak it all in.
Which is my greatest desire. I feel incredibly inadequate in every way, shape, and form and this is something that has gone on in my life for – as long as I can remember. My overwhelming insecurities and feelings of inadequacy are, surely, a big part of why I spent my teen years miserable. Stupidest damned fight I ever had in my life… ok, well, maybe not the stupidest fight in my life, but the dumbest one I had with my sister was because I was jealous of her intelligence. I wish I was kidding to admit that, but she’s so smart and she totally gets it and I… don’t. I come from a smart family. They’re all so… brilliant when they want to be and then there’s me who struggles constantly just to feel like my contribution to any given conversation is something more than superficial.
I want depth. I desire knowledge. I think I wanted to write since I came out of the womb because before I learned cursive, I wrote a story about a girl who made friends with a pegasus. It’s not just that I wrote it, but that I remember it and to this day hold it dear. I wrote all kinds of images and stories that came into my head and while most of them have been lost to garbage cans and fireplaces over the years, they’re all still here. You think I’m pointing at my head? {shaking head} I’m pointing at my heart because even now, I hold this endeavor so dear. I breathe it. It’s always been in me.
Yet the part that hurts is that after years of trying and years of criticism from those I allowed to read my stories, years of trying to improve and learning to deal with the pain of not measuring up, all I still see is that I’m stupid. I don’t get it. I don’t want to just write a story that’s ok and a fun read. I yearn to write something that makes people think, feel, react. I want someone to read it and cry, but then to think about it six months later and think “There was just something in there that made me understand someone differently, made me understand a situation differently because I saw them through this character or this author’s eyes.”
But that doesn’t happen in real life, supposedly, as I keep being reminded – except it does. People talk in depth about the psychology and beauty and uniqueness in certain exception works out there. In my head I can see it and where I want to be and how perfect I want it to be, but there’s this gap between what I want and what I’m capable of doing. The road to getting there is long and tedious and all I see in my way is insecurity and stupidity and inadequacy.
So I read and I write and I listen to people and I observe and I watch documentaries and dramas with the eye of how the writer was inspired to create this character and the motivations of such characters and I don’t know any other way to make myself better, but I’ve worked my ass off trudging through history books, psychology texts, mysteries, blah blublah blah blah, and I’m still not smart enough or good enough to see that what I see as perfection or that the desires I have are either unattainable for the world or just unattainable for me.
And I cry because I’ll never measure up to expectations that are far too high for any real human to exist. Or maybe they’re just too high for me.
