The You Suck/ I Suck Hate Spiral: Why I’m a Gigantic A-Hole

23 Sep The You Suck/ I Suck Hate Spiral: Why I’m a Gigantic A-Hole

I don’t know how to write this post without making myself look like a total asshole. So I won’t. Because I am being a total asshole. At least recently.

I have been having the most horrible, mean-spirited and hateful thoughts about another person and no amount of kumbaya positive-thinking is turning them around. Desperate for answers, I went to yoga for the first time in a long time. I haven’t been going to yoga for awhile and just typing that makes me want punch myself in the face because lamenting about my lack of yoga is so flippin’ pretentious and first-world-spoiled it’s sickening. But whatever. While I’m racking up a list of my horrible personality traits as of late… let’s add pretentious to the list. And now, like some asshole narcissist, I’m writing about it on my blog as if anyone really cares. So me?  Narcisistic?… check.

Here’s the deal, I’m being super judgemental. I am Judgy McJudgerson at the Judging Fair.

There is someone specifically in my life that I cannot stop judging. In my eyes, they are making bad, bad life choices. Choices that are affecting their family (and mine) and I can’t stop fantisizing of telling them how I really feel. Like All. The. Time.

Stop doing that! Can’t you see what’s happening? Can’t you see how your hurting your kids? Don’t you understand anything you complete imbicile?!?! Why are you even IN my life? Gah??

I realize how horrible that sounds. I realize it because I don’t normally grapple with these feelings. I’m a hippy at my core — live and let live, Sister — different strokes for different folks — potato, pitato and all that good stuff.  After I think these nasty things I suddenly feel like a dispicable person who should be stabbed in the eyeball with a flaming hot needle, and yet, I can’t stop thinking them. It’s like I’m riding this speeding train on a You Suck/ I Suck Hate Spiral that leads straight to Self-Loathingville and I can’t find the damn off ramp.

To make things worse, I’m also struggling with jealousy which adds something special to my heaping pile of self-flaggalation.

As an editor and social media person, each day I read mom blogs and peruse Facebook and Pinterest for work-related items. Everyday I bump up against any number of smart/ wise/ funny/ talented people. These people have all morphed into one conglomerate of the “ideal” mom/wife/friend/human being. An ideal I’ll never embody. This imaginary flawless being looms large over me, tauting me. You should be doing crossfit. You should bake more tarts/ casseroles/ cupcakes in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. Why aren’t YOU writing amazing things like that? What’s your problem? You train wreck of a souless sack of fat rolls! 

So I went to yoga to find some breaks for this roller coaster.

My favorite part of yoga is Savasana. It’s typically at the very end of class. It’s the part where you get to lie there and not move. Savasana literally means corpse pose and, naturally, it’s my favorite part. I heard a yoga teacher say once that your true yoga practice begins the moment you enter Shivasana. That’s when you must wrestle your thoughts (aka demons) and strive to quiet those noisy bastards and just be; no thinking, no judgement.

On the surface it appears that I’m lying there motionless but I’m always fighting an epic battle in my head. I often think of monks when I’m in this corpse pose. I wonder how they spend months in silent, contemplative meditation when I can’t even do it for three minutes straight. I imagine them slaying every last dragon and devil known to man and then floating off into some realm closer to heaven. Usually I’m just struggling to get one toe off the ground.

So naturally, since I have been an epic asshole lately inside my head, this Savasana was no different. My thoughts turned to this person that I’ve been vehamently judging. The key to this pose, and meditation, is to let your thoughts come and go. To let go of the thoughts. To recognize them as you would a benign novelty, say a squirrel in the yard, and then let them pass through without attaching to them and thus giving them steam to fuel the engine.

So I let this person pass right on by. I waved. Metaphorically, of course. Nice to see you harmless, clueless, little squirel. Namaste. 

My next thought was of this ideal person that I’m bumping up against daily. Hello there figment of my imagination. Move along little bright-eyed, bushy-tailed wonder. Namaste. 

Then I thought (without thinking, of course) how interesting it was that I would think these two things back-to-back.

Judgement and jealousy.

Judgement because of jealousy.

I’m judging because I’m jealous.

I’m putting someone else down in a feeble attempt to raise myself up.

At this moment, my heart exploded inside my chest like a grenade and my eyes popped open because I remembered the last time I was called out for being this kind of gigantic asshole.

A long time ago, back when I was really young, and reeeeeaaaaalllly insecure, there was this boy who liked me very much. He liked me more than he should have and I took advantage of that. To my ever-lasting shame I treated him horribly. I don’t remember much about this person or our relationship accept this one thing. He called me out like no one ever has.

On New Years day, while standing in his mother’s kitchen that had just been burned floor to ceiling the night before in a house fire wherein no one was injured (thank god), he said something that I’ll never forget. I had just made a snarky, sarcastic remark trying to make light of a difficult situation. A coping mechanism I employ to this day. I don’t remember what it was specifically, but I’m positive it was insensitive considering the cirumstances.

He picked up a blackened coffee cup that had been sitting on the counter revealing a ghost impression underneath. He looked right at me and said,  “You know what my mother says? She says that hurt people, hurt people.”

Hurt People, Hurt People. 

The stinch of char and the sound of dripping water brings me right back to this particular shame. A moment when my heart exploded inside my chest like a grenade and my soul popped wide open. He was right, and I was an asshole.

And once again,  I’m a hurt person, hurting people. I may have learned enough to keep the sarcastic and insenstivie comments to myself, but I’m still thinking them.

I keep telling myself that this person in my life that I’m judging is here to teach me compassion and I always thought it was compassion for them. But now I think it’s compassion for me that I’m lacking.  I’m so horrible to me. I would never let anyone speak to me the way I speak to me. (See paragraph #2… and #6…. and #8.)

I may not have always known better to use kind words, but I do now. I know better than to judge them, you, me, everyone so harshly. I know better… and yet clearly I don’t. Because that’s the thing with self-loathing and self-love. It’s a spiral track. The progress is slow and winding and often times you feel like you’re getting no where, but inch by inch you are moving one direction or another, you just have to know which one.