Prove You Earned That Air

I struggle with feeling that I’ve not done enough to earn my air at any given moment of my existence. These long-standing feelings of insufficiency, of not being enough just as I am, without improvement, provided a door that my eating disorder used to sneak into my psyche with, and there she set up camp.

I hustled and worked hard to earn approval even before the eating disorder came fully on board at age eleven, however. I don’t recall a time when outside validation wasn’t vitally important to me.

How can one possibly be okay if one isn’t okay in the eyes of other people? How do you know you’re enough if people don’t tell you?

Even as I navigate my eating disorder recovery, the feeling that I have to justify my existence lingers. The little girl inside me is still in distress too often.

Would that I was able to follow Elsa’s advice and let go.

Societal Expectations Are Harsh

Part of the problem stems from societal expectation, I’m sure. We haven’t built a terribly welcoming and accepting place, especially if you deviate in any way from current norms. Financial success, or the pursuit thereof, is a popular norm I’ve not achieved.

I struggle with accepting the manner in which I earn my coins. Or don’t earn them. I’m on long-term disability – I haven’t had paid employment since 2014 – so I don’t work for the money I receive. I survive for it instead. I had hoped my brain would come back online healthy before now, but it seems uninterested.

Some cracks can’t be fully repaired.

It’s getting a bit better – I’m old enough now that people ask if I’ve retired rather than if I work. That stings some, and makes me think about lottery wins and getting work done on my face – I probably won’t, I’m not a big fan of surgical pain, though it’s nice to imagine – but I prefer the assumption that I’m old to the disability explanation.

If someone I don’t know well is asking, sometimes I’ll imply my disability leave is about my hip. We’re more forgiving of physical injury.  ^[i]

Personal Expectations Can Be Harsher

Any negative judgments not coming from society will come from me. I’ve a long history of being critical of myself. The metric is irrelevant – my brain’s default setting is to assume I’m lacking. It doesn’t matter what we’re talking about – from grooming to gardening is on the criticism table.

If I’m in a group, I assume I have the least to offer of anyone there. I always feel like I have to work twice as hard just to be tolerated. I worry about other people’s judgment and failing it. Though I’m not sure the rest of the world is as invested in criticizing me as my eating disorder and neuroses are.

I’m better when it comes to judging other people, but it’s hard. You can’t give to others what you lack: no grace for yourself means little of it for other people. Harsh people tend to be harsh with universality.

I Struggle to See Clearly

My brain is pretty wedded to the idea that winning is what’s important. How do you know you have value if you don’t win or excel? Unfortunately, my brain is convinced I do little of either. ^[ii]

Neurotic assumptions aside, I usually rank somewhere in the top quarter of results for most endeavours. Unless you were to analyze my lifetime rummy results. I don’t do well at rummy. Cards don’t like me. I don’t know why – I shuffle beautifully. I can even rifle them. Things I know as fact, that I often execute things well, don’t always translate to my feelings, however.

Feelings seem easier to grab hold of when compared to thoughts.

My habit of remarking on my substandardness annoys the people I know a bit. I can appreciate that – the constancy of it can smell a bit disingenuous and attention-seeking to people outside my head. It’s not. I ask when I need help accepting myself.

I’m getting better. I’m better at recognizing the lies that live in so many of my thoughts and emotions. I’m getting better at giving myself props. Step one was coming to believe that many of the things our inside voices tell us are lies.

Feelings and thoughts can be wrong. Why is it easier to believe that about monsters under the bed than about the hurtful stories we tell ourselves?

The Proof Is in the Doing

I’ve made some changes to my daily routine to make it easier for me to see at a glance that I have “earned my air.” The first change involves the daily calendar that sits on my desk. It’s a week-at-a-glance format with large daily squares, and it’s used to being multifunctional.

I started using it for my gratitude practice as well as for scheduling this year. It’s been working out well, much better than trying it with a new (additional) journal has in the past.

I’m now adding the things I accomplish. I write down that I made the bed. I note that I walked the dog. There’s a record of my mowing the lawn, shopping, visiting, gardening, and writing. There is proof available now when I start to feel less-than. In my head, all I ever do is death-scroll social media. The reality, when I see it on paper, is different.

A New Notebook

The second change involves a new notebook. Is that ironic? This habit’s been more successful than the aforementioned gratitude journal attempts. Five months on, still going strong.

I’m keeping a record of the movies I watch and the books I read (I’m not going to bother listing television shows. Outside of the occasional miniseries, the only show I watch with consistency is The Great British Baking Show.) This way, I can prove I spend my time doing more than simply converting oxygen to carbon dioxide.

The idea of a log wasn’t mine, but it’s proven to be therapeutic. When I’m feeling particularly slothful, I’ve but to open a page. Record-keeping lets me notice trends, as well – when I’m down, my content gets dark indeed.

Notebooks do have drawbacks. They’re harder to share than things digital, for one. I can rewrite my entries for presentation, but that still requires me to come up with an effective format. I might have chanced screenshots, save for one thing – my handwriting is illegible.

I gave some thought to playing about with PowerPoint, but that much effort for a list starts to feel a bit like lateral movement.

I didn’t record my impressions regarding content, so beyond validation for time spent (and a bit of humble brag), the lists aren’t terribly useful. I’ll probably make changes as I carry on, adding a thumbs up or down at the very least. Recording impressions would help me as well – I hate rewatching something I disliked the first time through. ^[iii]

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Things I’ve watched and read the year so far, excluding background television.

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^[i] I have congenital hip dislocation.

^[ii] With an eating disorder, “winning” is emaciation. No other option exists. Everything else is losing, which makes you a loser.

^[iii] If I’d used tables or Excel, I could have been provided with totals that don’t require me to count. The total for the year so far is 42 books and 69 movies. I could read more. I would prefer that ratio to skew in the reverse.

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