The Constant Companionship of Critcism and Insecurity

I'm a year older.
And I feel about 100 years wiser. Last year was a rough year, to put it mildly. But it's a year that I wouldn't change. Maybe when I'm old and arthrictic to the point that my fingers curl in on themselves, this will be the year that I describe as the year that I really, really learned to liked myself. Even if it came about as a survival skill.

Things started to go down hill last Halloween. I remember it vividly because I was smack-dab in the middle of hot glue-ing spanish moss to my son's camoflouge pants. (Think gilly suit, people). My emotional demise started with a phone call. A really long phone call about how terrible I am. It escalated to public confrontations, continued in emails, spanned 9 months and all the while was coated with other people asking me what was happening because they were told....blah, blah, blech. There was a final nail in my emotional coffin but really, at that point, I was already an insecure shell of my former happy self so it didn't quite sting as much as you'd think.
The worst part was this was all unfolding at church. Church: a place to learn bout kindness and compassion; understanding and charity. It's like when you are watching the news and you hear about a crime. And then to find that crime was committed by a police officer- someone who holds themselves up to be an example of what they say. This was something like that. Being church associates made it that much more dissapointing.

   Kelly was my constant sounding board. I told her everything and she told me that what was hapening was unfair, untrue and below the belt. It felt nice to have my ego stroked. Or my goodness reaffirmed. As the problem got bigger and messier, word got out. My Massachusetts friends that knew were great, phenominal even.  But there's only so much you can do for someone who has decided that leaving her home is optional.

And my husband, well, he was my rock. I could write a book on all of the tender ways he cared for me and protected me. Sitting next to me at church, he resembled more of a pitbull than the jovial husband he has always been. It was like you had to get thru him to get to me. I felt so protected by him. At home he would vent his frustrations with their behavior and he would make sweeping declarations of their character. Oddly, I would defend them in ways and try to justify, on some level, why they treated me the way they did. When I had made all the excuses for them that I could, I came up with a story in my head that maybe so-and-so was beaten severly and often by someone who looked like me and so years of pain and heartache bubbled up when I was around. Like they had no choice in hating me.

How could I not understand?

And let's be clear, this trick only came about after spending way too much time blaming myself for their bad behavior. Because, if you haven't already learned, criticism is merely the wrapping paper. The true gift is insecurity.
 But I'm not saying I didn't laugh when my husband joked about "no-fly lists" and "full cavity searches" for our special friends. It wasn't a belly laugh. More of a pityfull laugh while the tears flowed. So that makes it OK.
Because, despite my wicked wit and sharp tongue, I am a tender hearted girl. I don't understand cruelty or meaness. Of course I have said and done things that have hurt others. Those are the moments of life that I hate the most. But I have never set out to bring someone down or tear them apart. And I don't ever remember a time when someone did that to me...not even highschool or jr. high...those trecherous years when bad behavior seems the norm...even then I was handed kindness on a plate and told to eat it up.
I did. And I do.
 I'm the first to blame myself so criticism fells like, "I knew it. I knew I sucked."
This was the first time in life that someone was force feeding me anger and hatred and telling my small world know how much I deserved it.
Not fun.
And again, mixing church stuff with this only complicated matters.
But it brought powerful rewards. Each time I got the wind knocked out of me, someone would come out of the woodwork with an unexpected kind word. A perfect example was a Sunday when  there had been an issue; church was over and I was walking to the car with all of my bags. I was trying to get to the car in one piece and just as I got close, my husband got out and came around to open my door and take my bags. At the same time a guy from church came up. I opened my mouth to thank him for the really beautiful lesson he had given about service. In the lesson, he got quite emotional as he thanked members in the class who cared for and taught his teenagers and young children. It was so heartfelt and genuine...just loveliness at it's best. I was sitting alone, in the back (don't know where my attack dog was) and I was hardly keeping it together. You see, I can never let anyone cry alone. So as he spoke and was moved to tears, I cried, too.
And here, in the parking lot, was my chance to thank him for such a fabulous class. But before I could get it out, he was extending a hand to my husband and talking about his class. And he was confiding to my husband that, as he was discussing the lesson on Christ-Like service, he said (and I hope I never forget his words) "I was looking out across the room and I saw your sweet wife and I thought to myself, 'Who serves more than her?' " And he added, "So I just sort of went off on a tangent."
I would have never guessed I had anything to do with his impromtu speech.

It was like a tender mercy dropped down to let me know that I'm not scum, at least not in everyone's eyes.
And it's been my experience that every time something happened that cut through me, something even more loving and kind came from somewhere unexpected. It was like the universe was puting it's finger under my chin, forcing my eyes upwards and saying, "You can do this, kiddo."
And I did it. With class, if I do say so myself. I never bit back or said the sarcastic, snarky things that I could have in those moments when I was being emotionally fillet-ed (how in the heck do you spell fillet in the past tense??).
There is so much more to this story. There was one night when I went to tuck my daughter in and she was crying. She said that she knew what that family was doing to me and that, seeing the way I was handling things made her feel like she could handle the mean girls at school.
That night my tears were tears of gratitude.
Needless to say, when the call came asking if we'd like to relocate, again, it was a tender mercy. One that said, "You've done well. You've been through enough. I knew you could do it. And now, so do you."

For that bit of knowledge, I will be forever grateful. Makes it worth it all. And besides, my hair that I lost is growing in nicely.
So Happy Birthday to me! I really like me. And I really like you.

I hope the feeling is mutual.