Playing Pretend
I just got done with a meeting about Trans Form (Dec 11-13, 2009! Plug plug plug!), with a friend who came to see my work-in-progress showing on Monday.
Talking about the specifics was just fine – she’s a great artist, which is why I invited her and wanted to hear her thoughts. She had good suggestions, and asked some useful questions that I need to think about, in terms of blocking and motivation for certain actions. (Hi, J, if you’re reading this, and thanks again for the meeting!)
But, near the end of the meeting, I realized once again how unable I am to take (and believe) any sort of compliments. I’m so ridiculously self-deprecating, and I hate it.
As we were finishing up discussing the show, my friend basically said, “Things are looking really great. You’ve obviously been working hard on it, and it shows. You have some tweaking to do, but the bulk is solid and I’m really excited to see it. You should be proud of what you’re putting together”
I responded with the appropriate thanks, but caught myself thinking, “I haven’t been working hard on it. If I’d been working hard on it, it would be in a better place and XYZ – that I still need to do – would already be done. And, if I’ve never before been purely proud about anything I’ve done before – if everything has always been tinged with regret for not doing it sooner, better, more completely – I don’t see why I should be proud of this; this one more example of a project or task that I have reservations about.”
Wallowing in self-pity isn’t something I find attractive in myself. Anyone who knows me knows I have a problem being self-indulgent. Self-pity seems extremely self-indulgent, and I rarely believe I deserve to give myself any sort of break. Every project I work on, every opportunity presented to me, is viewed through the filter of, “I don’t deserve this. I’m not good enough, my work isn’t good enough, and you – the person, the organization, the fates themselves – don’t understand how undeserving I am.”
I know I need to get out of this funk. It’s not helped by how late I stayed up reading trans fiction… (What else to make me feel down about my own life than reading about fictional characters who are able to pick up ‘womanhood’ better, faster, more confidently.) Does everyone feel this way? That they’re not good enough? Not deserving of their good fortune? I’m so aware of my own perceived shortcomings that I have trouble with the idea that anyone who speaks positively of me, of my work, would do so if they knew how I felt about myself. If they saw myself through my eyes.
Even though I know my eyes are the worst at judging myself, I don’t have a spare pair handy to do the job better.
Themocracy
Rebecca, I work as a designer. If I am not careful I can slip into constantly second guessing my ability and whether others value my work. Or of my value as a person if I get too introspective. I think a lot of people do this
I think what helps me not to is accepting that, regardless of how I feel, if people I respect have a good opinion of me, or of my work, then I should at least listen and accept that as being equally valid to my own, out of respect. I could say “well but they don’t know x,y,z about me/how much effort/what I do” but they could well be seeing things or aware of things that I am not. So I accept their point of view as being as true and as worth while as mine.
I also relate to the not deserving of good fortune guilt. I think some of that is about where I am in life, how I feel about what I have achieved personally and being aware that some of that is luck. We’ve discussed that a bit talking about “passing”. It’s like a kind of… generalised guilt about not having had it worse as a trans person when so many do. I think it’s good to be aware that one has… but I also feel it’s not good to dwell on it too much. Sometimes things just are. The universe isn’t much into value judgements, only people are.
Hope that helps in some way
Thanks for the comment, Mattie. What you’re saying about accepting the opinions of people I trust, not to supersede my own opinions but to augment them, makes a lot of sense. Just easier said than done
And spot on about passing. I sometimes feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the bad things that “always” happen to trans women to happen to me, too.
[...] line with my previous, super positive and up-beat post, I’ve been thinking more about why I have this horrible block on viewing myself, or [...]
[...] and how I’m feeling conflicted about the way I’m portraying my life. As I’ve been mentioning, I’ve had trouble feeling excited and confident about the show. In the show, I don’t [...]