Catch-22

Sometimes I just shake my head. I pull my eyes out like an alien and attach them to the tips of my fingers and look at myself from all the other angles I possibly can.

I am so imperfect. No one knows this better than me. I just don't know anyone who tries harder than me. Some may try as hard, but I don't know who tries harder.

Today I have been told that I "look awful," and that, I "look so sick." Added to that is the fact that this person is disappointed with me. Written in their own words. I have no desire to belabor this point or out this person. And for 99% of you it is no one you know. But I can't express how much it hurts. Am I too thin? I suppose that's the implication. I seem to recall when this person went through a very tough time and virtually stopped eating...and I never said those things to her. But I am older and supposed to be the mature one, so I will try to be what I am supposed to be.

Maybe that is my biggest issue remaining. I'm still working on myself all the time, and I'm sure you're tired of hearing me whine about it. I spend so much time, really the biggest thing I have to give, trying to be what others want. Once my time is given, that huge piece of me...well, it's not like I can ever get that back, you know? Time is infinite in theory, and in spirit...but here on this world, now, it is often in short supply. If the people who ask the most of me aren't giving something back, really I don't require that much, oh, never mind. Really. This is such a common lament from the "givers" of the world, it is tedious.

I am told that no one asked me to do the things I do. I am told no one expects anything. I think people who primarily know "taking" as a way of surviving, indeed, as an acceptable way of interacting with and even communicating with others their connection, literally have no idea what they convey that they expect. And when one stops doing all those things that they expect, that they think they don't, these folks are mighty unhappy.

But nothing exists in a vacuum. I do not exist in a sterile, error-free bubble of my own dutiful deeds. But if, just if, I am who I am and am being the best me I know how to be, and that me is, at her core, a "giver," maybe it is the ultimate "taking" to take that from me, by forcing me to be something other than I am to protect myself.

It is an awful Catch-22. Not so bad as the one Joseph Heller envisioned. Not half as bad as other people's out there. But mine. Maybe sometimes you feel the same way...