Who, even, am I?

I have a hard time understanding what I look like to those around me.

This is because my own view of me is clouded by my own negativity and personal hangups. It is imposter syndrome, but applied just to myself any time anyone gives me a compliment.

One of my strongest internal narratives since childhood has revolved around the idea that people receive me well enough, but as they get closer they will start to see me the way I do.

This is why, as one close friend put it, “you command the room with confidence which is strange considering what we know goes on inside of you”.

I don’t struggle to be liked, per se. I think it’s a deeper difficulty than that. The closer one gets, the harder it is.

This unfortunate belief was further solidified in my adult life because of personal circumstances and consistent negative feedback from some (mainly male) people in my inner circle. I’m not pointing to one in particular, but the majority of men in either authority roles or partnership roles have found me frustrating, especially when it comes to sharing space with me.

I’m supposed to be leaving my reliance upon the opinions of others behind. I’m supposed to be finding my worth in my own opinion of myself. And while some people are going to remain important, and I am going to want to maintain a mutual respect within those relationships, I’m still not meant to define my own value based on my perception of the opinions of others.

I feel like this is easier said than done.

I’ve been seeing a therapist – first as a couple and now alone – for nearly a year, and at the end of my most recent session I asked my individual therapist about affirmations.

“Will there come a time,” I wondered, “when my ego isn’t challenging every kind thing I say about myself? When my stomach will stop turning when I do this? Will it become something I believe?”

“It might be that you need to do something more than just empty affirmations.”

He suggested I write the affirmation, but quantify it with evidence of ways in which I embody the traits in question. If I have concrete evidence that I am good, it may become easier for me to accept that I am.

I didn’t really understand the trauma that comes with being neurodivergent. I guess sometimes I have imposter syndrome there, too. On the one hand, I understand that ADHD is the likely reason why school didn’t work out for me as a kid, but there’s also an ever-present voice inside of my mind that clings to negative feedback and experiences and won’t let me live them down. Try as I might to outrun my old ideas, they always find their way into the forefront in crisis. Maybe it’s not that it was harder for me than other people. Maybe it’s just that I really am lazy. Maybe it’s just that I really am stupid.

Still, when I would come up against this narrative in my own home I would try to explain that it wasn’t something I seemed able to change. Much like school, I tried one method after another to make it stick. Every new alarm, every new to-do list, every new app that promised to be my ADHD life hack was as ineffective as the one before.

Every time the issue hit a critical boiling point I would try to reiterate: “it is not a choice I am making, it is a personality trait”.
Every time I was met with resistance. An assertion that I could do it if it were important to me.

I can say without hesitation that if wanting to become a normal human being with a functional brain was enough to do it, I would have been normal pretty early on. If being judgmental and mean to me about my inability to operate on a consistent basis was enough to make me operate consistently I would be insanely effective by this stage in the game.
Instead, what I can tell you is that I endured this pushback on what I said for nearly two decades. I would express that I didn’t seem to be able to do things I didn’t want to do the same way other people seem to be able to. I would express that I didn’t see mess the same way, and that even when I realized things needed attention I just could not for the life of me get it going. It took nearly nothing for me to be overwhelmed and almost every daily routine task that most people don’t even think about was a battle for me to maintain. I would be told I was making excuses, or that I was wrong and just not trying hard enough.

In so many ways I sought reassurance and found none.
What I found instead was a diagnosis that officially confirmed many of my experiences. My struggles were perfectly normal for someone abnormal to have.
People would ask me, “is it a relief for you to have that diagnosis?”
And at first I think I did feel relief because I finally knew that there had been a reason I always felt a little out of step, but there was this other piece it took some time to be able to examine.
Diagnosis or not, I had nearly twenty years of feedback on why living with me was difficult and stressful and chaotic. I may have been right in saying for all those years that there was nothing I could do to fix the problem, but now I carried so much more hatred for myself over them.

I say “carried” as though I no longer do, but I have to admit that it feels like a backpack filled with rocks every day of my life. I have a good idea now, when I stop long enough to look around a room, that the half-finished projects and scattered belongings on every visible surface is unfair to those expected to share the space. I have learned over the years to follow a person’s eyes to whichever pile of doom is least pleasing to them at any given time. I have taken on the judgment of my own condition, applying lash after lash to my own backside for things about me that I can’t change.

I have lived my adult life trying to be everything I can possibly be to earn love and affection. I don’t ever want to say no. I don’t ever want to rock the boat. I have given in, given up, taken blame and followed others because of my insecurities and my need to be liked and I have done this without even knowing the depths to which I would go.

It seems to me that every time I tried to quiet my own needs to be lovable, I replaced them with a painful narrative I could use as proof I wasn’t worthy. As I found clarity in freedom from addiction there were many parts of my disastrous behaviour I could no longer ignore, not least of which was my overt doormat position.

I didn’t realize how much of enlightenment was going to be me, out of body, watching myself and thinking, “what the actual fuck?”

I didn’t realize how vividly I would be taken away from an unfolding situation by sensory recall and unresolved trauma.

I didn’t have any idea just how angry I would become.

And I guess I really didn’t think that getting better was going to mean demanding better, or that demanding better was going to mean everything would explode.

Hadn’t I given away all of myself, my wants and needs and desires so that I would be loved and accepted and not left alone?
Why then, does it feel like my only road to freedom is the one that leads me away?