Pandora’s Paradox: Self-Critique & Self-Discovery

There are certain things I hate about myself — things I assumed were getting better or have long ago been eradicated through hard work, tenacity, therapy, and, okay, I’ll say it, a pinch of denial. I think we’ve all had this.

Suddenly, you recognize those hateful things have been there all along, silently watching, secretly waiting for the moment you won’t see them coming — like a stalker hiding in the bushes with night vision goggles or an Incel hunting your Instagram and blowing up your DMs with cryptic, yet threatening messages created to mystify (certainly) and terrify (kind of).

Surprisingly, writers and stalkers are not all that different from each other. We are both a collector kind of people, a gathering species — harbingers of heartache and hoarders of experience (not just our own, but other’s as well). It’s how our worlds work — gathering as much information on a subject as possible, accumulating data to help us explain our existence and perhaps everybody else’s in easy, chewable bites.

However, when it comes to writing, nothing is so brutal as handing over precious art, like fragile glass figurines, to other creatives, welding critiques like a sledgehammer. OH, so painful!

Here, the victim is blamed — why do you allow your work to be so precious in the first place? You need thicker skin than that — thicker skin than most. This is how it goes. It’s what I’m used to and expect.

I’m not opposed to feedback. I thrive on it because how can I know if what I create translates or translates effectively? Still, even among my peers, I’m a little off for some reason. It’s probably because of how I learn.

To make sense, I must absorb the concept a million different ways and then process every kernel of thought, spliced with doubt and threaded with double entendre (or so it seems, or maybe that’s just me?) Then I look at it a million more times in all its multiple configurations before I can write it down and publish it, all in the name of exploration to its fullest.

It’s a traveler’s mantra, a deep-sea diver’s creed.

This ongoing exploration process is not just about the work in progress itself. It’s gathering information, seeking enlightenment, and refining ideas. It’s exhausting!

I do it (with fingers crossed, a whisper of prayer, and squeezing my eyes so tight I’m under threat of eyelid blood blisters), hoping to present it to a broader audience and that it’ll resonate.

But that’s not what I hate about myself. All that stuff? That stuff is all I’ve ever known. It is what it is, and so it is. I don’t wish for it to be any different because I don’t know what it would be like if it was.

What I hate about myself at times is when logic and my emotions don’t align. Like when I’m expecting feedback but get a critique that feels extra sharp and piques my worries, and my self-consciousness leaks out — like wearing full Spanks shapewear, two sizes too small, and suddenly a big fat tear rips through the spandex and everything that I’ve been holding in and hiding comes spilling out. I’m left with a broken zipper and jagged seams across my ruined pride.

And my shame bubbles up, and I can’t swallow it down or pretend not to notice or talk to my shrink because it feels like nonsense — like I should know better, I shouldn’t take it so personally, I should know that feedback is said to be helpful, and I am allowing it to be hurtful. Reason and emotions aligning is what I want, and the lack of it — that’s the hateful part.

Resolution is the point of every question asked, and every story told. Every person (yes, even the creeper in the bushes and the weirdos on social media — even those people) yearns for reconciliation, understanding, and ultimate acceptance. It’s natural, regular, and needed.

I believe that everybody must be allowed their own journey toward resolution, everyone that is, except me. So why not me?