Half agree, half disagree. Surely someone else can relate to what I’m about to say.
The Caitlin Cassidy problem(s):
It all boils down to my extreme responses to anything life throws at me.
To be fair, life has thrown a lot at me. It’s been crazy (but also wonderful, though even wonderful isn’t always easy) in ways even an objective outsider could see. I know the crazy could be far, far worse. Look at my girl Elizabeth Smart! For some reason I always circle back to Elizabeth Smart as a kind of litmus test for extreme suffering that grew into grace.
I have my peculiar handful of warped coping mechanisms, and a tendency towards misdirected intensity. I have good insight, but not always enough hope or faith.
I wouldn’t call myself an underachiever, though I suspect I may be perceived as such. I’ve chosen to survive because I know I deserve happiness. That’s not an underachievement.
Yet I think if everyone had inner compasses, mine wouldn’t point east or west. It would just spin. It spins and spins, and leads me back into my own head instead of out into the world. I’m dizzy with myself, for myself, by myself.
This is why I’m an internet junkie who loves writing and connecting with people. It’s a compulsion that’s partly for validation, and partly a release.
But I don’t think I create “ALL” of my problems. I didn’t ask for or create certain situations. Have I made some of them worse? Sure. It’s impossible to be well adjusted all the time. But mental illness aside, there’s nothing I can’t unlearn.
And have I already overcome a lot? Of course. And I’ll continue in that direction. I don’t doubt that. I don’t think most of the worst suspicions I’ve had about myself turned out to be true in a way that will keep me in quicksand.
Anybody else?!?
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