What if there's nothing wrong with me?

My dog Sadie rested on the floor while I read. I looked down at her when she audibly farted. Startled, she eyed her own rear with some consternation. I chuckled and went back to my reading. A few minutes later, it happened again, with the same startled reaction from the dog. When it happened a third time, Sadie stood, walked to a different spot in the room, and re-settled herself there, as if her dog bed were the cause of her surprising tushy noises. I laughed out loud and texted a friend: “Sadie keeps farting and getting scared by the noise. I feel like there’s a metaphor or life lesson here.” 

—

I sat across from my therapist and explained how my thinking was flawed. Or maybe it was that my feelings were inappropriately timed or overblown or disproportionate. Or perhaps I told her about how my romantic patterns were evidence of my deep-seated injuries. She probably made that face (you know the one, it says ‘oh, honey’) and typed something on her laptop. Maybe she told me I was being too hard on myself. Probably she said that. She probably also asked if it was Judgeypants speaking (Judgeypants is what I call my internal critic, who recently told me her name is, in fact, Jane).

—

My friend Harriette, herself a counselor, recently turned to me and said, “Tracie, I think you are in a kink relationship with yourself.” 

“Because I torture myself?” I replied, smiling.

“Yes. You call yourself names that you would never let someone else use about you. The other day I heard you call yourself ‘stupid’.” 

“Dumbass,” I corrected. “I probably called myself ‘dumbass.’ I know I’m not stupid.”

She made the face and told me to stop being mean to her friend. 

—

When I review old journals, the throughline is often a form of pathologizing of myself. It is a kind of perfectionism, but not the one that seeks external validation. Rather, Judgeypants Jane polices the gap between who I wish I were and how I show up. Her perfectionism chases imagination, rather than validation (and she has a great imagination). 

Sadie’s silly evening farts kept coming back to my memory, and Jane suggested all of the work I have done in the past year has been, in effect, moving to another part of the room — while the offending patterns travel with me. Dumbass. 

But what if I’m not? 

In the past three months, I have been making an effort to meditate more regularly. Most days, for ten to fifteen minutes at a time, I try to sit still enough for the truth to get in. And somewhere around the 6 week mark, I wrote something different in my journal:

“What if there’s nothing wrong with me?”

What if I’m not the dumbass dog thinking a change of position will free me from something that is within me? What if avoiding that mistake is not the lesson?

Sadie was wrong about the source of her discomfort, but she wasn’t cruel to herself about it. She was uncomfortable. She made an adjustment. She moved on.  

“What would it feel like,” I wrote, “to just be ok with my feelings, instead of judging myself for not feeling differently? What if there is no deadline? What if I’m right on time? What if there’s nothing wrong with me?” 

As of this writing, Jane is unconvinced, but she appreciates the framing as a question. She is tired. She only wants what’s best for me. And to sit down. Pretty sure they’re the same thing.