I have some hours to kill while waiting for my son's dad to let me pick Louie up; I was so angry, I was about to just leave San Diego after already waiting for four hours, but then, I thought, no, I'm not gonna do that to Louie, even though his dad is acting like a jerkoff. So, I'm on my second blog post at my second coffee shop today, pondering life, because I tend to do that these days, because it's not exactly the way it oughta be, in my opinion, and writing about it helps me make some sort of sense of it all, and maybe even change what I need to, rather just saying "Fuck it" like I sometimes want to, in which case it'd be me I'd be killing instead of hours. Eww.
So, here's what's happening in my life right now: my first two blog posts were attempts at saying what I wanted to say without actually saying directly what I wanted to say, which is, to state it plainly, that I haven't been "grateful enough" lately, nor have I been "working hard enough," in my opinion. But then, see, I question this by asking: by whose standards? In reality, I think I'm as grateful and work just as hard as plenty of people. But...I also happen to have extremely low self-esteem. I don't think much of myself, value myself, or have much of a sense of self-worth. I've been this way since childhood; no matter how great my achievements - and I've had some good ones - I'm never "good enough." And I feel that this "character defect," if you'll humor that term for now, affects me - and others - negatively. So, I'm determined to get to the bottom of it. I hail from a family of scientists - at least, on my dad's side - and that's what we do: we figure things out.
To that end, I'm reading an illuminating book by Robert Wright entitled, "The Moral Animal - Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology," copyright 1994. I mistakenly thought I was onto something entirely new and revolutionary when I had begun pondering evolutionary psychology on my own after being raped in April of this year; it was a life-changing event that jolted me out of a 6-month suicidal depression that had begun in October of last year. After the rape, I went to my therapist and received multiple diagnoses for "mental illnesses": borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and general anxiety disorder, all on top of my then-3-year-old self-diagnosis of being an alcoholic/addict (but 3 years sober, thanks to Bill Wilson's recovery program).
Interestingly, felt the same sense of relief upon receiving the triple "mental illness" diagnosis as I did on January 19, 2012, the day I learned about the disease of alcoholism by reading what's adoringly dubbed by legions of grateful recovered alcoholics as "The Big Book," copyright 1934. That fateful day changed everything for me when I learned that I too was an alcoholic, and that, as such, I must stop drinking entirely unless I wanted to get progressively worse and quite possibly die (I chose to stop drinking as opposed to the alternative, with the help a sponsor, the 12 steps, and what they in recovery call "the rooms"). That began a fascinating and life-saving journey into myself, and so, figuring out "why" I am the "way" I am has become a continuing and expanding quest of mine, with, of course, the goal of changing the "way" I am, for the "better."
For me, the phenomenon of "alcoholism" doesn't quite reach deeply enough for me as an all-encompassing explanation for my behaviors and feelings - nor does the term "mental illness" - because I feel that there has to be something to explain those, too. My post-depression/post-rape hypothesis? It's a combination of immutable genes and early individual childhood/adolescence as well as collective human experience-shaping, also known as Darwinian anthropology, social biology, or evolutionary psychology, among other nomers.
Evolutionary psychology, in my and Robert Wright's opinion (which I'm determined to find more who share), explains, quite sufficiently, why I was depressed for six months and wanted to die. It also explains why a man chose to rape me and over fifteen other women. Really, it appears to explain every single human behavior, choice, action, feeling, and thought there is, for every one.
To quote Wright: "Altruism, compassion, empathy, love, conscience, the sense of justice -- all of these things, the things that hold society together, the things that allow our species to think so highly of itself, can now be confidently said to have a firm genetic basis. That's the good news. The bad news is that, although these things are in some ways blessings for humanity as a whole, they didn't evolve for the 'good of the species' and aren't reliably employed to that end. Quite the contrary: it is now clearer than ever how (and precisely why) the moral sentiments are used with brutal flexibility, switched on and off in keeping with self-interest; and how naturally oblivious we often are to this switching. In the new view, human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their constitutional ignorance of the misuse. The title of this book is not wholly without irony." (Pgs 12-13)
Along with my blossoming understanding of alcoholism and budding understanding of mental illness, my study of evolutionary psychology will be, I think, a survival mechanism akin to "mindfulness," the practice by which one observes oneself without judging, just noticing (some writers that educate proficiently on this particular topic include David Richo, don Miguel Ruiz, and Eckhart Tolle). As Wright explains, evolutionary psychology isn't a way to justify, condone, or judge human behaviors and feelings; it's just a way to explain them.
For example, it explains why, yesterday, when my phone was plugged into the restaurant's speakers where I work - and it began to play a Spotify song with frequently recurring usages of the F-word: "You da fuckin' best, you da fuckin' best, the best I eva' had," and so forth - I felt so sick I thought I was going to faint, throw up, or both, and finally I had to go and cry a little in the bathroom for a minute. It brought out all of my insecurities, as I'm a human being with a particularly highly-sensitive need for social approval. It also explains why, on the opposite end of the spectrum, I was so elated and giddy when, on six different occasions throughout the day, customers came up to me to tell me that I had made the best pizza they'd ever had (the achievement of gratification by way of approval).
Understanding myself and other human beings, as individuals acting on a species-wide basis, gives me an indispensable tool in dealing with the sometimes overwhelming feelings and counterproductive thoughts that occur in my body and mind, ones that could, left unchecked, unnoticed, and untranscended, detract from my success...like today and my son's dad being a total A-hole and my reactions to it - evolutionary psychology explains that, too.
I had a moment yesterday, after the F-song incident, when my brain was thinking, "You're such a failure! You suck! You're a failure as a mother, you failed as a wife, you're failing at work, just give up all ready!", my body churning from my gut to my chest to my throat, face, arms, hands and legs tingling and shaking, blood pumping faster than comfortable until I took that moment in the bathroom to regroup and recognize that these thoughts and feelings weren't "me;" they were programmed into me for some reason, a reason I'll find out more as I continue to read Wright's resonating brilliance. I'm going to stop giving those feelings and thoughts power over me.
And if you don't mind, I'll share with you what I find. :) And if you do mind, you certainly don't have to read it. :P
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