Well, not really, but that is where we will start the story. A few months ago, my sweet husband and his friend traveled to my mother's house and hauled a very ( very!) heavy stackable washer and dryer down the narrow,steep and altogether treacherous stairs of my mothers antebellum farmhouse. The washer and dryer was a gift from my mother, a replacement for the 9-year-old el-cheapo brand washer and dryer we have moved from home to home over the past 10 years. A kind gift that made it that we didn't have to run the dryer 3 times to get a load of dry clothes. We were grateful. Well... I was grateful... husband was frustrated, weary, and grateful.
Several months later and husband is a approached with a great deal for a really nice High-Efficiency washer and dryer set... much higher end than what we had then and what we have now. But now, there is this hanging issue: what do we do with the stackable set my mother gave us? Give it back? Sell it?
This story is full of nuances that might help understand the story a little more fully... the nature of the gift... the reason my mother had a spare set... relationships and burden on others....but all of that would make this a much longer post than anyone wants to read ( and I have more important things to say). Here is the bottom line: I was going to be wrong in some way... and that is a horrible feeling.
The nature of wrongness is something that we all deal with, although how we deal with it differs. How I deal with being wrong has changed significantly over the past 2 years, likely as a result of changing my views on what it means to be wrong and what being wrong says about me.
Historically, I have kept my wrongness as a deep dark secret. Wrong was a flaw on who I was, and had direct influence on my inherent value. If I was a diamond, I would lose 5 points for the time I stole from my mom when I was in high school...7 points for that guy I kissed when I knew he had a girlfriend....91 points for that time I spanked my daughter. And, on a long enough time span, my self-worth was diminished from the value of a diamond to the worthlessness of gravel.
And here is the simple truth: I thought that if people saw me being wrong, they wouldn't like me, let alone love me.
There is a second part to the deep dark closet of wrongness, because when you hide being wrong, you also tend to hide the possibility of being wrong. So, really, what I've done is built this giant, dark closet of lies and withheld vulnerabilities and fears and truths and confined myself into this space where I am defined not by who I am, but by what I have been able to hide from everyone.
And resentments.
In those moments where I hid the possibility of being wrong, I would fail to speak a truth, and then would feel like roadkill that had been unwittingly driven over by someone who was free from those constraints. And, as a result, I would become resentful of them... of their freedoms. Why were they able to live in the moment and proceed in their lives... loved despite their wrongness... and I couldn't?
And, ya know, when I really think about it, that is actually a really huge part of what I've felt. So much so that I'm going to say it again.
People like me... people who hide their wrongness and strive for perfection to reach some elusive state of worthiness have one gnawing issue that causes them to pull their hair out: Why do people who are so wrong get loved anyway?
I mean... here I am... I've hidden away all my rough edges and I've put on this elaborate show... twisted and turned myself inside out to be the diamond that I think you want me to be. And yeah... maybe you love me.... but you also love that incredibly flawed piece of gravel over there!
It is almost like I should never have been hiding all those flaws to begin with.
Now, here I am, learning my lessons and trying to grow and I'm letting those things go. I'm starting over. I'm being honest in the moment and I'm not hiding my wrongness. Or my fear of wrongness. I'm being authentic and vulnerable.
So, back to resentments. Over the years, I've built up these resentments. I recently have been working on letting go of many of these things, and with some people, it meant I needed to reestablish a new relationship. One of these people recently accused me of being a list keeper. My instant response to that was one of defense ( pretty standard response for a wrongness-closet keeper!). But, after a wee-bit of processing, I realized that they were right... I WAS a list keeper. Because I was hiding away all of this wrongness and fear of wrongness, I was also hiding away all of those moments of resentment I had over their wrongness. I was absolutely a list keeper.
What they didn't see is that I'm trying really hard not to be a list keeper anymore. I'm trying to start over without hiding. Unfortunately, they don't understand that you can't start over without clearing out a big old closet full of shit you have been stocking away for years and years. And they don't understand that I'm willing to accept that I might be gravel... and they've only known me as someone who wants to be a diamond. I understand their position... it can't be easy to know a person one way, only to have them 180 on you.
My sudden transition into this place doesn't mean I'm more wrong now than I was before, but somehow my wrongness doesn't hold the same weight as it use to. When I'm wrong, I'm wrong in the moment. It happens, I feel it, people end up loving my anyway, and I proceed through my life without worrying about the deep dark closet of wrongness. I don't strive to be wrong, but being wrong has stopped defining me.
Of course, I could be wrong.
