Good morning…
With a quarter of a century under my belt, I experienced my own cacophony in 1988. Remember? Cacophony means a mishmash of loud conflicting sounds, a racket, an uproar (see 1.7.16 post “Our un-lived parts.”). I was a twenty-five year old newlywed, an inexperienced therapist living in Connecticut a long, long way from my childhood comfort in Ohio. As if it were a microphone set before my soul, my journal picked up the din of my “quarter life” crisis.
5/1/88
What am I supposed to do when my wall of “togetherness” is having holes poked through it? From the outside in, I am having pain touched off by my clients’ pain, by my therapist’s piercing words, by my unstoppable journey into adulthood. From the inside out, I am feeling a welling up of desire to change, to experience life fully, to be in touch with my whole self. The wall that has always separated my outside face and my inside feelings is weakening.
I’ve built a very “good,” people-pleasing, but confining image for myself. My facade has brought me a lot of approval, much success, and many “straight A’s” in different aspects of my life over the years. I grew up learning that sad and mad are bad and that happiness and smiles are good. Now it’s hard to break out of that “Susie Sunshine” identity to allow my true sadness, my inevitable frustration, my honest “craziness” to show.
What I realize is that my “pleasantness” has been my defense for years. It is hard for people to hate, to get angry at, to put down a “perfect looking” person, a person who makes no mistakes, hurts no feelings, angers no one. This has been my internal, unspoken, all-consuming goal for years: “external perfection.” But now I ask, “Is it perfection or protection?”
That answer that comes is: “The latter.”
How many of us protect ourselves for as long as we can behind a “perfect looking” facade, separating our outside face from our inside feelings?
…first clean the inside of the cup and of the plate [examine and change your inner self to conform to God’s precepts], so that the outside [your public life and deeds] may be clean also, Matthew 23:26 (AMP),
Sue
