I've been reflecting on my own writing. This would be easier to do in private journals, but I choose to do it publicly because it helps me notice what I conceal from "the world", and to a lesser degree, from myself. The part that I don't write about publicly I call "my shadow", and throughout the years I've written, my shadow has shrunk in size. I'm honestly kinda proud about its footprint now, there is very little difference what I write here from what I would write in a private journal (and the missing parts would be uninteresting: I'd probably register abnormal dumps in the restroom, and when I masturbate and to what materials).
When there's gaps in my writing it tends to stem from weed abuse. I enjoy writing when I'm high, but when I come back to it, it reads like non-sense rambling (as if this was anything else!). I feel an immense amount of shame when I'm high, and if I was honest in my writing my daily writing would become a constant barrage of shame, so I tend to go back to my notebooks when that happens. My shadow contains a lot of shame.
When I go back to these notebooks and I'm sober usually think "nah man you're cool, you're imperfect but everyone is, you don't have to be so hard on yourself", but I really feel like I don't know how to speak to myself. My therapist says this stems from my relationship with my dad, that I must "reparent" myself, to think what a good parent would tell his kid to encourage him.
One of those very painful moments of life comes from asking my father for money for a calculator. He used to be super stingy with money, my mother insisted he had to give us an allowance and you could feel his pain just pulling out his wallet every Sunday. I was in middle school (secundaria in Mexico), I must have been 14 or 15. He used to go into his bedroom to read romance novels. I knocked the door and approached him "dad, I need money for a calculator, I have a math exam coming up and I don't have one". He said "why should I give you money if you're going to fail anyways?". I was crushed, I turned around and left before he could see me cry.
Of course I failed. At school we had a tutor of sorts, a teacher who would check on us if anything was going wrong. My tutor was an American-Indian man, a very tall and dark man who commanded respect. He brought me to his office. "Mark, why are you failing math?" he asked me. "Because I don't have a calculator, it's difficult doing divisions without one". "Well, why don't you have one?", "I asked my dad for one, but he didn't want to give me the money to buy it, he said I would fail anyways".
I remember he looked at me in the eye for about three seconds, silently. Then he opened a drawer and pulled out his calculator. "This is yours now" he said, "I believe you won't fail". I teared up and thanked him.
My parents would separate shortly after this memory, so I now know there was more going on than having a needlessly mean dad. He would later on go on a spiritual transformation and now he's one of the kindest and wisest people on the face of this earth, but it was this dad who taught me how to think and speak to myself. Any need that I have is a hassle, and even if the need is satisfied, I will fail.
I'm fortunate enough to be able to speak about these things with my dad. Most people with difficult parents do not have this privilege. I've told him how mean he was to me, in hopes of healing. But, as I told him "I know it's kinda useless telling you this, because the man you were then is not the man you are now". He has apologized to me and he speaks to me lovingly now, but the corpus with which this natural intelligence was trained will remain there. I can only hope to counteract it with constant reminders "I believe you won't fail".
How do we learn how to think to ourselves in a kind and loving way? This truly baffles me. I notice it immediately in others, and I'm quick to point out evidence to the contrary. "I'm so awkward around women" my young co-worker said "ha! what you call awkwardness is your charm dude" I reply. But, when it comes to myself, the best I can to is deny "Oh that was a stupid thing to do—shut up, you're not stupid".
My co-workers were having a friendly argument as I was writing this, which I missed because I was so focused. One of them asked
—"Isn't that true Mark?"
—"What?"
—"That after you're 25, it's all downhill from there" (my co-worker is 26).
—"Are you saying that I'm 20 years worse off than you?" I said playfully.
—"No no no..." (he didn't know how to fix that statement).
—"Every year that goes by, I look myself in the mirror and I think: I'm better off than I was last year", I said with a laugh.
—"Well, you decline and then you ascend",
—"Nah man I disagree, you choose to ascend or decline at any stage".
I love when answers seem to come out of thin air.