Perfectionism and Guilt

Hola Everybody,
A friend took me to go see Fences yesterday. I have to say that, in a film that is chock full of powerful turns, Viola Davis acting was one of the most powerful performances I have ever seen. Full stop. 

The film, which explores manhood, fathers and sons, intergenerational trauma, motherhood, relationships, among other themes, is a tour de force of direction by Denzel Washington. He managed to wring out stunning performances from all involved -- parts big and small. Hollywood will very likely ignore it, but fuck them. we don’t need their validation. Strongly recommended.

Here’s hoping that whatever you do this year, you do it joyously. Felicidades.

The Perfection of Guilt

I quit high school and was hanging out, being a table pimp¹ and shit, until my mother put a damper on all that one cold February morning. She came into my room and requested I wake up. When I didn’t listen, she came back and poured icy cold water all over me.

“Here’s carfare money, get out of my house, and don’t come back until after 5pm, like people who work do,” she informed me.

For the first couple of days, I hung out at friends’ homes until their mothers (who were just as sick of their slacker sons) let me know I couldn’t be hanging out in their homes doing nothing.

It was winter and it was cold, so it was hard to find a place to hang out. I really thought my mother was being an unreasonable bitch at the time.

Well, I came home one early day, and she gave me two options: I would either finish school and enroll in college, in which case, she’d be willing to sell her ass if need be to support me (my mother has a colorful way with language), or I went to work with my stepfather as a construction laborer. Just to show you where my head was at the time, I chose the latter.

My stepfather did not want me working with his crew. He fought, yelled, and stomped, but in the end, he had to take me to work or suffer my mother’s wrath. I knew jack shit about construction -- he even had to tell me to take my hands out of my pockets at the site. LOL!

At first, my stepfather would find menial things for me to do just so I would be out of the way. I hated the work. It was hard and it was fuckin cold outside. My stepfather was a patient man, and one day he took me to the side one day and told me that he was going to teach me some skills that I will always have some use for later in life.

He wasn’t lying.

I learned how to put up sheetrock and then how to set tiles. I was a fast learner, so my stepfather’s confidence in me grew. One day, he left me alone to do a bathroom from scratch. Now, setting tile is not as simple as it looks. But if you follow the basic rules, you can get the knack of it pretty quick. I mean, set your level, draw the line, add the gook, and start tiling, right? Well, the thing here was that at the time I loved smoking weed. Smoking weed and doing anything that takes some measure of precision is not a good mix -- not very smart. But that’s what I did and when I tiled my first bathroom, I got the leveling wrong and the tiles didn’t match when I made my way around the bathroom -- it was off by a lot, like an inch or so.

My stepfather was pissed off, but he was a patient man, and we were able to fix it up a little. The next day, he looked at me and asked if I could do the deed, and I did. This time the level was fine. The tiles looked quite good in fact, except for two tiles that were at wrong angles. Those two tiles were pissing me off and I thought I had done a miserable job. When my stepfather came to inspect my work, he pronounced it a good job. I looked at him and asked if he was high. I showed him the two errant tiles and he turned to me and said something that I never forgot, “I see the two bad tiles, but I see the other 99% percent of the tiles that are well done.”

In this way, my stepfather taught me good craftsmanship, but he taught me a more valuable lesson. The lesson being that perhaps striving for success is better than going for perfection.

Perfection and guilt go hand in hand. When I looked at the wall, all I saw were the two bad tiles. My inner critic immediately went to work and it filtered my perception of reality. My stepfather me taught to build on my successes rather than to focus on my failures. Eventually, I developed into a good tile-setter and I learned other basic carpentry skills that have stayed with me all these years. Skills that helped me get a job wherever I went.

In my work with people, I see this perfection/ guilt trap all the time. People end relationships because all they can see in their partner are the “two bad tiles.” Many become depressed because all we can see in ourselves are “two bad tiles.” The reality is that there is more that is good about us than we care to admit, we just can’t see those qualities. We focus too much on our mistakes. The mistakes are all we see, they’re all we think are there and so we go into an internal war to destroy all that. And sometimes, unfortunately, we destroy a good piece of work.

I hope that whatever you resolve to do this coming year that you focus on what’s good rather than the negative. I hope you drop the internal war and the guilt trips. Those are all traps -- prisons that keep you locked up. I actually hope that you develop a mission rather than a resolution. A mission is about being about something, standing up for something. As the saying goes, if you don’t stand for anything, you’ll fall for anything.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

Notes:

1. Table pimp was slang used to describe men who still lived with their parents but bragged their prowess. The table in the phrase was perhaps in reference to the dinner table, as in pimpin’ your mother’s dinner table.

Monday Madness [Shame]

Hola everybody,
I realize that I’ve been writing blog-worthy content as Facebook status updates. I have to stop that! LOL 

Here’s one (a response to all the demands of kumbaya-ing with racist Trump supporters):

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” -- James Baldwin  #BlackBrownIndigenousLivesMatter

There’s a blog post in that quote somewhere. #CaptainObvious

Shame

I kid around that I am attracted catholic women because their ingrained shame and guilt equates to deviant, hot sex. I am only half joking, but the reality is that Catholics do not have a monopoly on shame and guilt. Our major religions rule by it and our political and social institutions are grounded in it. In addition, shame is a major component of addictive/ dysfunctional behavior. I believe we live in a shame-based culture. For example, there is evidence that shame is the cause of much of the violence in our society.

Most of us have some experience of shame in our past and most of us don’t like to talk about it. That is what shame is all about. Essentially, shame is a conditioned response to violating someone else’s standards. When we feel shame, we are usually afraid of rejection or abandonment due to trespassing of real or imagined boundaries. For some people something seemingly mundane like farting in public (or even writing about it) might cause shame. Some mental health specialists consider shame to be the root of many personal difficulties, especially the codependent behavior observed in the families of addicts.

Ideally, shame should serve as an alarm system letting us know when we have offended other people, and that if we want to continue being friends with them, we may need to change our behavior. So maybe fluffing the sheets after farting is not a good way to keep a lover. Worse, broadcasting intimacies on social media might not be a good way to garner friends and influence people. Some of us have no shame, which is not a good thing. However, many people are haunted by feelings of shame, which make them feel unworthy.

Almost all experiences of shame entail seeing ourselves as “small” and others as “big.” This is typical of people when they feel ashamed. If you temporarily try this out, you can probably experience shame too.

Shame has been described as “the secret emotion” or “the hidden emotion.” For most of us, it is a minor inconvenience, but for others it is devastating. When people feel shame, they also feel ashamed about feeling shame, so they are not inclined to talk about it. This is why I give people who try to do something about it major props.

Shame is the result of someone repeatedly giving us the message, “You’re bad,” often without telling us exactly what they found displeasing, and usually without giving us a clear idea of what we could do instead, or how to do it. Parents, teachers, and other authorities do this, sometimes because they do not know any better.

In a way, someone who feels shame does so because he was a capable and quick learner in an environment where shame was being taught. The good news is that that same ability can be used in learning to have a different sense of self.

In cases of severe shame, it is as if the person has only one standard for themselves. “I should please others,” is the ruling thought pattern. Putting too much emphasis on pleasing others can result in submitting to abuses without complaint. I see this behavior on social media, and the internet in general, in abundance.

In transforming shame, it is important to recognize the difference between someone else’s standards and our own, and to be careful to put on our thinking caps when deciding which standards to use for ourselves. As we do this, we are also building a healthy sense of self, or what is often called self-esteem or integrity. This is who I am; this is what is important to me. In reality, we only begin to exist as individuals when we can stand on our own in this way. Until then, we’re just mirror images of someone else -- anyone else -- and dependent on them for a sense of identity.

I know two people very close to me who have not been alone -- ever. A friend goes from woman to woman, looking for validation. I have yet to see him be single in all the years I know him. Of course, each woman becomes his focus until they fall from grace. Another person close to me has never been outside a relationship since her teens. A part of that, I believe, is the consequence of this inner shame and the need to live up to external standards. Somehow, we have to find better strategies for living more effectively.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [Guilt and Forgiveness]

Hola mi Gente,

A friend posted the following the other day and I feel it bears repeating:

“… Tamir Rice's mother was sent a bill for the ambulance transport that took her 12 year-old son to the hospital where he died from a police officer's bullets. It reminds me of the more barbaric countries that send the family a bill for the bullet used to execute their relative.”

 -- Caren Kornfield Rago

* * *

Guilt

Love and guilt cannot coexist,

and to accept one is to deny the other.

-- A Course in Miracles

Feeling guilty is just another way to rationalize behavior that defeats your happiness. Feeling guilty is an indulgence -- a selfish and twisted way for you to continue beating yourself into the insanity of committing the same actions and expecting different results.

I once offered forgiveness to an individual who had wronged me and her initial response was to tell me how it cut her to the heart. She went on about how nice I was (I was not), how I didn’t deserve her treatment of me, blah blah blah. Her eventual response was silence. Years later, I ran into her by chance on the street and she began to cry. She told me that she had just come from her therapist and that she had been talking about me -- about how she squandered what could’ve been something special and beautiful. How she always pushed what was good and decent away. She was so beside herself, all I could do was hug her and assure her everything would be all right.

I have a funny feeling I’ve become the subject of too many therapeutic sessions. For the record, I do not want to be anyone’s therapist or therapeutic subject matter. If you are a woman, all I want is for you to wrap your legs around my waist in lustful entanglement. I am kidding! Yeah, yeah, I sometimes trespass certain boundaries, it is OK.

The sacred offering of forgiveness is not about allowing someone to take advantage of you. Few people know that forgiveness -- true forgiveness -- must be first cultivated internally before it can be given away. Once you forgive yourself, you come to the full realization that there is no “other” to forgive. Paradoxically, forgiveness is probably one of the most selfish of acts.

Of course, because I am a very flawed human being, my first impulse, if you commit a wrong against me, is often anger followed by revenge fantasies. But as I (hopefully) evolve into a more conscious being, my interest is in helping you grow out of that mode of living. True growth is the process of becoming willing to have defects of character removed. It’s not even about having them removed. That may never happen. Growth is about becoming willing to have defects of character removed. When you become willing, you shed the guilt and start doing the real work of becoming. Lying, cheating, dishonesty, the whole cast of character defects -- become fodder for your growth:

Yes, I lied to you, this was why, and I want to stop. And I because I love you, I want to work with you so that we can become truly intimate and loving.

The path of less resistance is to continue to feel guilty than to actually grow. When you feel guilt, you are in the grips of your ego. Guilt isn’t about someone else, it is about you because only your ego can experience guilt. Guilt will always disrupt your growth, will always sabotage you, and will always compel you to make the same mistakes.

You will be treated like shit, because guilt demands that you should be treated like shit. You will meet assholes who will defile you because your guilt demands it.

The end of your guilt will never come as long as you buy into the notion that there is a legitimate reason for it. For you to be released from guilt you must first learn that guilt is insanity; it always is and always has been and will always be. Guilt has neither reason nor rhyme.

And here’s why:

Guilt asks only for punishment and as long as you buy into it, you will be punished -- always. You will be punished and be lost in a world of illusions and shadows. My former lover wants to be punished. And in a different (erotic) context, this can be a very attractive trait. However, for reasons that were very valid at one time, she does not understand kindness. And the fact remains that she is not too different from many women and men I know. Be nice to them or take away their reasons for feeling guilty and they will run away. The Ex is attracted to my light, but I have noticed that whenever I shine for her, she disappears. No sooner that my dark side appears, she can’t see enough of me. It is all quite complicated, but I believe that she is uncomfortable with unconditional regard. 

I cannot do that -- I’ve never been able to do that -- to manipulate fear and guilt for sexual or any form of gratification. It is not worth my peace of mind. The Ex replays the scene: she disappears for a little while, suffers some more, and then somewhere in her mind, she remembers the light and calls to me. She suffers a lot, I think, and it saddens me to see her suffer. Many of us suffer in this way... Maybe one day she will come to the realization that she does not have to suffer needlessly. I do not know. All I can do is keep an open heart and radiate light.

A mind without guilt cannot suffer. Your freedom -- indeed, your very salvation -- depends on your escape from the self-made prison of guilt.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Vincent

¡Hola! Everybody...
Caution: you may not want to read the following story. Seriously.

* * *

-=[ Letting Go of Guilt ]=-

I have written about guilt before. In a way, I believe guilt (along with ignorance) should be considered one of the deadly sins because it’s responsible for so much suffering.

I usually make a big stink about my birthday -- celebrating it and letting as many people as I can know about it, but it wasn’t always that way. Many years ago, my stepfather, Vincent, a man I loved and saw as a surrogate father, committed suicide in the early morning hours of my birthday. He put a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. Just like that...

I’m asleep in a drunken stupor. I’m vaguely aware of someone trying to shake me awake. I think it’s Vincent, but I’m not even sure if it’s him or a dream. Annoyed I shrug him away and tell him to leave me alone, and I crawl back under his car. He tells me he really needs to talk to me and I tell him, or the dream, that it can wait. To leave me the fuck alone.

It was the day before my birthday and we were living in Houston. It was Friday and my stepfather had picked me up from work and I asked him to stop by the liquor store to stock up for our usual Friday family get-togethers. In retrospect Vincent seemed a little different that day, more pensive, and we spoke on the way home. He told me a lot of things: how he was feeling pressure to maintain the quality of life; he spoke of disappointments -- he spoke about a lot things.

I was surprised because Vincent was the type of man who never complained. He was cut from old school: never let them know how you feel. He was a rock. He was a worker. Vincent was made of the stuff that made this country. He got up in the morning worked very hard, and he provided. That’s what he was taught a man was supposed to do. But he would never really talk about what was going on in his mind. He was a stoic in that sense. He did what he had to do without complaint.

On the way home that day we talked and we explored how maybe we can do things differently. I was working and I could help him financially (he wouldn’t accept money from me) and that he should let my mother know about the financial problems and stop trying to put up a façade that everything was fine.

When we got home that day, there was no one there -- everyone had left to go fishing. My mother’s an avid fisher and it wasn’t unusual for her to round everyone up and go crabbing or fishing. At the time, my sister and brother, as well as myself, were all staying in the house. My sister, had a live-in lover, as did my younger brother. Actually, my sister had only recently moved out, but she was there all the time. My other sister, lived nearby and was always around. We were a tight-knit extended family that spent a lot of time together.

That day, when I got home and went to wash up, I found a bloody pair of panties that had been left in the wash basin by my brother’s live-in girlfriend, whom I couldn’t stand. I showed this to my stepfather, who was outraged and it just fueled the whole conversation about letting people know there things were going to change, blah, blah, blah.

And we drank…

Towards the end of my drinking, I became what’s called an “ugly drunk.” I could get confrontational and say and do and say spiteful, hurtful things, and start shit, and that day was no different. By the time the rest of the family showed up, both Vincent and I were well into a quart of Bacardi and I was in rare form. Before the night was over, my brother and I almost came to blows (he took exception to me calling his girlfriend a pig), and Vincent argued with moms. Finally, my mother threw me out of the house because, “ I was acting like a garbage can.” Actually, she tried drop-kicking me but I was too fast for her. I don’t know where she found the strength, but she picked up this huge potted plant and threw it at me, barely missing my head.

I went to my sister’s house which was nearby in the same sub-division and started talkin’ shit there until, mercifully, I went to sleep under my brother-in-law’s car in the garage. No one knew I was there.

I am awakened by a cousin. “We’ve been looking for you, Eddie! Something terrible has happened! It’s Vincent! Hurry!”

I wake up thinking there’s been a fight or major argument but I’m completely unprepared when I see my mother’s eyes -- I see it all in her eyes and I’m wrenched into sobriety. My mother only manages to say, “Oh Eddie… ” or something like that. Nothing prepares me for the next time I see my dear Vincent, an incongruously neat bullet hole in his temple. I scream out in denial because I can’t accept this -- this can’t be... And I hold his head in my hands and beg him to wake up.

Outside the hospital, my brother challenges me yelling out, “It’s your fault! If you wouldn’t have been startin’ your shit this would’ve never happened… ” And he goes on a harangue for what seems to me too long and all I can do is stay quiet. And every word is like a knife into the very heart of me. When I try to form the words, nothing comes out, I have nothing, I’m empty inside, as if the very life force of me has been sucked out.

The details are hazy, but I remember someone trying to wake me up. I thought it was Vincent. He kept calling for me to wake up and he tried to take my arm, but I shook it off, telling him to leave me alone. I’ll never be sure if this really happened because I was so drunk. Was I dreaming? Was it really Vincent trying to wake me up and telling me he wanted to talk to me, or did I make the whole thing up? I don’t know…

All I know is that sometime in the night one of my cousins found me and told me to get up quick because something terrible had happened. I looked at my cousin and she saw my anger and said, “Get up, Eddie, Vincent shot himself.” I’ll never forget those words.

They rushed me to the hospital and the last time I saw Vincent he was already dead. A part of my mind couldn’t wrap itself around that. There was my mother crying and everybody else and there was Vincent dead, having shot himself in the head in a drunken stupor/ rage. What’s worse, he did it in front of my youngest brother, his son Vinnie, who was maybe 5-6-years-old. He locked himself and my little brother in his car and blew his brains away.

At the hospital, it got ugly. My brother confronted me and told me that it was my fault because I had gotten drunk and instigated a series of events that ended tragically. Vincent wouldn’t have shot himself if it weren’t for me, he said. And I looked around and while the rest of my family didn’t say it outright, no one disputed it either. I jumped at my brother, the rage welling up in me was uncontainable.

Looking back, I can’t blame my brother. Our lives were irrevocably, senselessly changed that day, and it was something unfathomable, it was impossible to make any sense of it. I know that in my own heart I also felt Vincent’s death -- it was my fault.

They say that all suicides are accompanied by a psychological phenomenon known as psychache. Psychache refers to the pain, anguish, and psychological hurt in the psyche, the mind. Truth is, Vincent had attempted suicide before, but was unsuccessful. Sometimes when he drank, he would lose it completely. There were demons inside of Vincent -- who knows what lurked in his mind? What traumas he harbored? And while things weren’t all that smooth, he was experiencing the most success ever.

But I took my brother’s words to heart and I couldn’t forgive myself for Vincent’s death. From where I stood, I killed him. I created the circumstances leading to his suicide by fighting and inciting Vincent. Vincent’s actions that night almost destroyed my family; the repercussions would be felt for years. It was my fault as surely as if I had put that gun to his head.

Tragically, suicide is not as uncommon as we think. Within the United States, suicide ranks as the eleventh leading cause of death among the general population, the second leading cause of death among 25-34 year olds, and is the third leading cause of death among 15-24 year olds. Of the 240,000 annual suicide attempts, most do not end in death and despite the frequency of suicide, there is a huge social stigma attached to it.

I left Houston as soon as I could, returning to New York and distancing myself as much as I could from my family. I was unable to face the hurt, the destruction, but no matter how much I ran, I lived with that guilt in my heart for so many years. I can honestly say that Vincent’s suicide marked the beginning of my personal descent into hell. For many years after, I became more and more self-destructive, gradually surrendering to my dark side, throwing myself into an addiction that knew no satisfaction. And whenever I thought about changing, or doing something to save myself, my guilt was there, something I could flagellate myself with, ensuring that I would never feel worthy of some measure of sanity, some peace of mind.

I like to say that feeling fucked up is habit-forming, and it is -- you can rewire your brain for misery if you feel fucked up long enough. I couldn’t change in part because I didn’t feel worthy. I was unworthy in all areas of my life. I was a failure as a father, as a son, a lover, a brother, I was someone who never fulfilled his potential -- all these things drove me and my addiction. Most of all, I felt so guilty for my mother, who suffered so much.

Guilt is a completely different thing than remorse. In our culture, “guilty” is a verdict hammered out by a judge in court. And if no one else punishes us, we look to punish ourselves, in some way or another. Guilt for me meant punishment deep inside my psyche. It created in me my own psychache.

Today I know that Vincent’s suicide wasn’t my fault, but it took me a long time to get here. I also had a lot of support and did a lot of “inner” work therapeutically and otherwise. And still I almost didn’t make it. I too attempted suicide once and when that failed, I tried to get others to do it for me. But I’m here today, and I can celebrate my birthday and not be angry with Vincent for taking what I thought was the easy way out. For so long, I was so angry with Vincent. How could he do such a thing? How could he leave us? I still miss Vincent, and today I still love him…

Today, I know I can never really know why Vincent did what he did. Today, I try to honor Vincent’s memory by remembering all the good he did while he was here: his selflessness, his compassion, his commitment to providing for us -- five children, four of whom weren’t even his own.

Vincent always encouraged me to use my intelligence. He would take me to his co-workers when I was a child and announce, “This is my son and he’s real smart. Ask him any question -- go ahead.” LOL! It was a lot of pressure and I hated it when he did that, but nine times out of ten, I would get the answer right and Vincent would beam with pride. He paid for my cherished encyclopedia Britannica because, although he never had a formal education himself, he understood my intellectual curiosity needed to be nurtured. My greatest hope is that he really understood what he meant to me -- to all of us.

I guess the most difficult part of my journey was convincing myself that I deserved forgiveness and absolution. For so many years I lived with this crippling guilt. Then one day, I realized that if I wanted live, I would have to let go of the guilt -- forever. That was the day I broke out of my inner prison.

Love,

Eddie