Bad! Bad! Down On Myself

Part 18 of 30

My Fragile Self-Esteem

Yikes! I’m getting the finger of life pointing at me, not pointing randomly around the room, calling out other people. It means business, definitely targeting me in particular and pointing with something very clearly on its mind. And here I am in the grip of fragile self-esteem.

My look, then, in shocked surprise, is one of recognition of what is happening as well alarm. Those creases on my forehead are a worried reaction showing the seriousness of my situation. I am clearly not a happy camper, not feeling happy-go-lucky, in fact, happiness shall elude me till I'm on solid group and feeling safer, a terrible predicament.

Yes, I’m wondering, “Why me?” I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve been a nice person. I held the elevator for a lady the other day. She wanted floor 4 so I pushed 4 for her. But there could have been other times, like searching for a parking place when I wasn’t exactly hoping others would find a space before me. I'd take the first space if my crippled mother was waiting. That's how she raised me. But consider this: There was in fact someone leaving a space, another guy was going to make a left turn into it, and I had a straight shot to get in it first. But I didn’t do it. So how about some points for me on that? (I was afraid he'd spit on me in the elevator.)

Here we could recognize in these situations both judgment and goodness, that I “finally” got it together and shouldn't be the high priest of being down on myself. It's harder than it sounds. Even considering it as I have in the last couple weeks, I’m getting down on myself more. I'm thankful for everything that isn’t dire but I’m still grumbling under my breath.

I could go along like this for a long time, making these determinations on the fly that THIS means this and THAT means that. Then at the end of the day figuring how the day stacked up as a totality. If only there could be a Self-Esteem General Headquarters, where all of us have sensors on our bodies, feeding real time data into the machine and getting a read-out. My forehead even now is sweating. I’m a little worried that all this prying into the mysterious issues of life -- what I deserve, what I don’t deserve -- might be a mistake.

How to go back and resume my former happy-go-lucky demeanor, casting aside the real time analyses, eludes me. I need a computer at the very least I can talk to. But anytime I type my symptoms into today’s computers, I get the same pointers each time. Like I type in “finally get it together” and I get a dictionary definition, “to begin to function in a skillful or effective way.”

This is really a psychological judgment day, without the ceremony. No high priest vestments, no darkness and gloom and harsh spotlight, no crowds passing through to the light of day with me standing alone in the darkness. I'd hate it but it'd be dramatic.