Friday, September 24, 2021

Affection for Affliction.

 





Dear Doubtful,

Self-doubt is the kind that picks up every available bit of doubt and glues it to itself, growing ever larger like a cartoon snowball (yes, I agree; real snow hardly sticks at all- another great childhood myth shot to hell and back).  This wonderful ball of horrors and self-induced disaster is the stuff that nightmares are made of, and it has no limit on how large and all-encompassing it can grow.  It's also, and this such a shock, completely, absolutely invisible to others.  This giant monkey is only our own, and even if others catch a glimpse of this King Kong, they don't believe it could actually be a problem for you, I mean, you?  Come on, no way!?  Sensitive self-doubters, at this point, will take whatever it is that you may have exposed in your own self-doubt, and quickly pile it on to their own.  Like this:

Self-doubter X:  Well, I just hope my report was what they wanted...  (wistfully, uncertainly, speaking of a task they completed yesterday).

Self-doubter Y:  What??  Your reports are the best!  You are so good at them- I wish I could do half as well!  (reassuringly, confidently, even as they mentally consider the single report of their lives, filed 6 years ago, for a job that they were laid off from, at a company which imploded two months later in a scandal that had nothing to do their report at all).

Okay, now, here's the real mind-bending part:  See all that love, care, and detail I have used to describe self-doubt?  What about that, eh?  What if I love my self-doubt too much to rid myself of it?  What if I really am addicted to my self-doubt?  What if my affection for my self-doubt is all that the whole thing is anyway?  It never occurred to me.  Until I heard this song of the day. 

Yours, 

possibly, 

maybe, 

and self-doubtfully,