A Word I Don't Understand

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 Hey everyone. Sorry for the lack of posts for the last month. I am going to be back-posting the last four posts (28 Jan, 4 Feb, 11 Feb, and 18 Feb) after I post this one. It's been an odd month of getting stuff done but also feeling rather off. 

    A lot of that feeling came to a final climax yesterday when I was thinking of a specific word and how it has affected me my adult life. 

    This word gives me a mixed bag of reactions. 

    For some context, I was at work when I realized I wasn't feeling my usual happy, friendly self around my co-workers. Which is odd, because usually I am talkative and happy around everyone. As I went about my day at work, a single thought sent me down to a childhood wound that I thought I took care of years ago: "I don't deserve any of this."

    To some extent, I still feel this is true. I don't feel I deserve to have the job I do, the connections I have, and the life in my body. The thought still hurt though. It is something that I (apparently) still struggle with. A lot of my thoughts about my childhood and teenage years were about whether or not I deserved to live. It sounds suicidal, I know, but it really wasn't. I didn't want to die. I just didn't understand why I was alive. It was a much darker variation of the "Why am I here?" phase of life as a teenager. A very logical part of my head answered it in the most basic, logical way possible: "Because your parents want you to live and be here." Of course, there is a more emotional, almost philosophical part to that question. To this day, I don't have a solid answer to that question. 

    Honestly, I don't think I'm supposed to. 

    But with that logic in my mind, I came to an interesting idea that also brought in an odd annoyance I have with how people in my part of the world see things. The annoyance comes in the phrase, "I/You/We deserve [insert any object/concept]." I hear it a lot, and it sounds like a very entitled thing to say. My first response -that I keep to myself- is usually, "You don't deserve shit. If you want something like that, then find the way to get it." 

    To be fair, I was raised in a family where a lot of the things we wanted had to have solid reasoning and a solid plan to get what we wanted. We couldn't just say, "Because I want it, I should get it." That was usually met with a response similar too, "Well, too bad. You can't just get what you want." Sure, there were some basic things we got, especially when we were young children who didn't have the capacity to think about how to get what we wanted. A lot of the basic needs on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs -air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing- were given to the youngest in my family without a lot of thinking or planning required. (Obviously, children can't reproduce, so that part of the basic needs was left out of the equation.) But after a while, depending on the age and maturity of the child, the adults in our family would require more than just an expression of a need or want.

    With all of that said, I find the phrase "I/You/We deserve [insert object/concept]." utterly ridiculous. I usually hear this from someone who is no longer a child and -more often than not- whining about their life or current situation. And as I said before, my first response is, "You don't deserve shit. If you want something like that, then find a way to get it." I don't say this out loud. Mostly because I can't be bothered to hear the responses to my cold response. I get that it is cold, given how most of the people around me see their lives and circumstances. I have often tried to find another perspective on the word, but I keep coming back to the same response. 

    So why do I feel like this?

    I am not sure. Not entirely, anyway. I could point to many fleeting memories and feelings of insecurity in social moments. Times where I thought I worked out the way to get what I wanted or needed. Then the twist would kick in, and I wouldn't get what I wanted or needed. And maybe that's a part of why I feel the way I do. 

    But I'm done rambling. If I ever have a solid answer to this wound, I will be sure to let you know. 

Love and Strength,
Animus


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