I am disappointed a lot. In life. In love. In relationships. It is like I have this hard set idea about how life should go, and no matter how much spiritual principle I throw at my life, I still come up short. And so do all of you.
I don’t like this about myself but so far, I haven’t really been able to change it. I mean, I am working on it. Really. I am. But I still have these most unattainable ideas about you, me, life, love, how this whole deal “should” go. And probably the hardest thing for me to admit, is that I am not always honest about how I feel. In fact, if there is one thing I lie about consistently, it is how I feel.
I do not seem to have the ability (that is really a cop out, I do have the ability to be honest, I just choose not to) to summon up honesty when it makes me look bad. I, too concerned with being a decent human being, that I seem to capitulate when I think that being who I really am requires that I own that sometimes I am a selfish ass.
I was her yesterday. Of course, no one but me and now my sponsor knows that I felt this way. I knew. And that was enough to make me feel like shit. But try as I did, I couldn’t make my wants match up with more spiritual principles of love, service and honesty.
So what resulted was that I was disappointed with myself but projected that onto another (of course this is also without them knowing). Sometimes, often actually, I have entire arguments and issues with other people and they never fucking know. I have the feeling, do not share it, work it through and then move on, all without their knowledge or even awareness that anything was wrong with me in the first place.
What I lacked yesterday was congruency. I not able to own these harder parts of myself. These parts of me that are less than stellar, selfish, demanding, exacting and constantly in need of more. I do not like this about myself, but cannot disassociate this to make it ok within myself. It matters less that others know, I know and that is enough.
I am a work in progress. And I have to continue to accept, assimilate and reveal these parts of myself that are so incongruent with who I want to be, who I am and what I project for you to see.
The result is that I am disappointed in myself. I let me down by not being willing to own that I had feelings that made me kinda selfish and uncaring towards another. Sometimes I just want what I want and you are just a pawn for me to manipulate into doing what I want. And while not being particularly attractive, it is who I am sometimes.
I couldn’t own it yesterday, but I can today. I can be honest about my grosser handicaps and defects. I do this so that I can live in the body I am in, trusting that which I cannot control, tame, alter is putty in God’s hands and I, if I can be honest, shall be pliable, moveable and changeable in perfect timing.
Disappointment has a name. And yesterday it was me and all my expectations, plans and designs failing to be met. I want so much out of this life. I expect so much from myself and others attendant to my life. I am here doing this deal and nothing less than the sun, the moon and the stars are on the table.
Today I am taking a step back into me, owning that I didn’t do a good job of owning my feelings yesterday and in so doing lied about who I am. Today, I will do a better job of owning my less than perfectness. I will try to be honest about who I really am and how I really feel.
Disappointment has a purpose after all, it is a reminder to check in with yourself and begin again. With a new level of honest self appraisal which is not to be kept secret from others, but instead to be shared. Because intimacy requires that of me, of everyone.
Disappointment isn’t fatal, unless I lie to cover it up. Then it will erode all that I am trying to do and be, every single time. Disappointment is actually a flare that God sends up to let me know that there is a disturbance in the force. Showing me one more time that there is always work to be done on my side of the street. And sometimes that work is no more complicated than owning that I wish that things were different, to include the way that I feel.
😍 yes yes yes!