Compass of Character

Who ARE we?

A better question today would be, “Who do I think I am?”

I’m going through something. That’s the way Matt put it, anyway. “Shawna, you’re just going through something. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You are always so hard on yourself.”

Today I feel like I couldn’t be hard enough.

I’ve been “out of sorts” these past few days. Weeks, maybe. “Not myself.”

I suffer from a clinical hormonal imbalance. It’s wreaked havoc on the quality of my life since puberty, but significantly more pronounced since the birth of my children, and now, with signs of early perimenopause, the symptoms have significant repercussions.

Most people don’t believe me. I guess I do a good job of hiding it outside the safety of my household. The general consensus when I try to explain my mental/emotional instability is, “Oh Shawna, don’t be so self-deprecating.” Hard on myself. Exaggeration for self-preservation.

Yesterday, Lucy told me I am the scariest person she knows.

“It’s ok, Mommy. I love you and I’m sorry. But sometimes you, you know, are very scary.”

Shame. God, if there were words to describe the emotion that comes after an “episode”. Shame doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t “cut” enough. That feeling that you deserve to be sliced and diced for your behaviour. That you can’t take it back. That there are consequences to your actions that you need to acknowledge, accept, allow.

The scariest person she knows.

I was chatting with friends awhile back about someone we know who is much more visibly emotionally unstable. It was a fair discussion – emotional instability is, after all, a pretty easy target to rip into. Good people should behave in good ways. That’s what makes for a good person – good behaviour. Good decision making. Self-control.

Society doesn’t have a lot of patience for things they don’t understand. Or things they are afraid of.

But during the conversation, as we hashed out all of the things that made that person “incomprehensible” and “unforgivable”, I couldn’t help but feel that pull in my gut wanting be to be much more openly in their defense. But that would mean owning the part of me that resonates with that instability – that feels equally as crazy, sometimes, as they one we were calling out. But I kept it to myself, because I knew I wouldn’t get very far. I knew I would be opening up pandora’s box.

But the box was torn open, anyway, eventually.

It wasn’t the first time my hormones have thrown me off the edge. I’ve shared the story with friends, and once in a writing workshop. When Violet was under the age of two, old enough to get into everything and use almost every hour of the day to test my patience (with an adorable little smile on her face, but still), we had a particularly challenging day at home. I don’t remember the exact context, but I can tell you that we had been in a pressure cooker for days – possibly snowed in – and every little squeak and squeal was like a razor blade to my brain.

I knew it wasn’t “normal” to be feeling as irritated as I was. That sweet little angel was my world, and rationally speaking, lit up every aspect of my life. But I could feel a fiery rage building up inside my chest that didn’t match the story I was desperately trying to remind myself of  - that I was lucky to be a stay-at-home Mom; I was lucky to be able to spend every moment with my rambunctious baby; I was lucky I didn’t have to go into an office and be a “grown-up” and have conversations with adults and focus on work and projects that didn’t have anything to do with her while she was stuck in day care. I was lucky. I was lucky. I was lucky.

Then BAM! The frying pan I had been gripping with white knuckles came up violently, suddenly, in the air, and landed with heavy velocity on the glass stovetop. It shattered immediately on impact. And with it, my daughter’s panicked tears came pouring out.

Fear. That’s what I saw in her eyes. A vindication of my utter despicability.

It took me a half second to regain my sanity, but months to let go of the shame.

Maybe I haven’t let it go, yet.

Yesterday was another one of those days. I felt it building. I knew it was coming. But I tried desperately to work every angle I could to keep it at bay.

It had nothing to do with anything, save for the swelling onslaught of estrogen that, for whatever biological reason, my body produces at abnormal rates and inopportune times. I could feel the emotions, the irritation building, all day, but no story line to go along with it. So, my brain tried to fill in the gap – it played games with me, telling me I was a victim for this, and had a right to feel angry for that. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.

But despite my best efforts, I blew.

I was smart enough to take myself away from everyone, at least, but not far enough not to be heard. To be “seen”.

But it wasn’t me, right? That beast isn’t consistent at all with the person I am most of the time – the person I intend to be. The person I identify with in my head and my heart.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

I’ve been “off”, but is it my fault? When do we have to take on our emotions, our behaviours, as part of our identity? What makes us who we are? When do we become “bad people” and when are our bad decisions allowed to be just that:  a lesson to learn?

Matt and I have been watching “Barry”, an HBO show starring Bill Hader that is essentially about just that – what makes a person good or bad? What is the story we tell about ourselves, or that others tell about us, and how does that define our goodness? If the plot shifts, does our character change? If we step out of character, can we step back in? What makes us empathetic and lovable, or unforgivable and immoral?

Never in my whole life have I felt more compelled to be honest and authentic in this world than as of late. Perhaps it is a result of going through something traumatic. Perhaps it is because the work that I do requires me to take ownership of a lens of wisdom about life in order to coach others, and being phony or hypocritical doesn’t truly allow for that.

Perhaps it is a realization as a parent of what skills I think are most useful in the world they are going to grow up in. Being artificial won’t get you very far anymore. We can’t hide from the world and, therefore, it is almost impossible to hide from ourselves.

The truth is that I don’t think there are bad people. I think we are all inherently worthy. All inherently good. All equally able to access the “gold” within ourselves and continually evolve. But to do that, we need to fail. We need to make mistakes. And the more we ignore the things that make us human – the walls we put around ourselves that block out that “gold” – the thicker those walls become and the further we get from that true nature. We need to own our imperfections, look them straight in the eye, and not try to deny them or avoid them. How else do we grow? How else do we get better?

I want my kids to own their mistakes, to be accountable for themselves, but to learn to forgive and let go. Mostly, to forgive themselves. To be able to accept their imperfections and use them as material for more. For better.

But that means I can’t be a hypocrite, either.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Shawna.” But just hard enough…enough to learn something. Enough to be better.