Dissasociated

I feel like someone else

I don’t like it

It doesn’t feel good

Inside me there are voices fighting

Arguing about who will get to drive

And it doesn’t look like anything from the outside

Literally nothing

At all

Perhaps nothing but a flash of pain in the eyes of my body

Eyes that change as the personalities in me filter through and take their turns

Remnants

i feel lost
usually

a little out of place

but i try
and fit in

i get to enjoy

most things on
most days

but

what makes me feel
most at home is

hearing people argue and
feeling tension between others

that disturbs me

Stupid

I used to have a habit of saying, “I’m stupid.”

I didn’t always mean it. I usually said it just after figuring out the right answer and recognizing my mistake. “Shoot, I should have known,” is a common expression.

But why? Why should I have known? And even if I did know better…

Big deal.

It’s too late now. I can only just handle my reaction to the mistake and how I will deal with it in the future.

It can sting a little to be forced to fix something you are responsible for messing up; something you feel like you could have dealt with better in the first place.

But here’s a thought: if it isn’t uncomfortable in some way, there is no growth. If there is no growth, there is no presence of learning.

My old boss used to say, “You’re not stupid.”

He would make a point to disagree with me every time I got down on myself, and though it didn’t seem like it meant much at the time, I came away profoundly affected by this attitude. Years later I can still hear him, “You’re not stupid. You’re learning.”

If you don’t make it a point to be open-minded, you will not learn. You will only allow the information that lines up with your existing biases to reinforce your ideas. This applies to any material.

Learning is discipline. Learning is humbling. Learning is losing a little bit of the control that you perceived you had when you thought you knew something. Most of all, learning is necessary for adaptation and progression but since it is uncomfortable it is often undervalued and unsought.

If you let it, life will keep teaching you until the day you die.

It doesn’t mean you’re stupid if you don’t already know what you will be taught. That’s unreasonable.

Don’t be afraid to not know.

Don’t be afraid to learn.

Proverbs 1:5

Proverbs 18:15