The recent foo-foo-ra about MC/AT being a finalist for the Best of Blogs made me think and feel and remember. And since self-reflection is good for the soul, I just kept on...
On the surface, the growed-up part of me says stuff like "it doesn't matter, it's nice to be recognized and I appreciate being appreciated".
Yeah, right. Isn't that special...
But just under the surface is a whole LOT of stuff churning. Little soldiers fighting in the Self-esteem vs. Self-hate war. More evidence of my yin / yang imbalance. Which is good, I need to see these things.
It always floors me how people strong in yang can walk through life seemingly not caring what others think of them. Lord, please, I want to be like that when I grow up. At one point in my ruminations I was tempted to say that yang-strong people don't tend toward self-hate, but I don't think that's true anymore. They just manifest it differently.
Anyway, I realized I have had two other experiences in my life with public "competition". Both experiences were negative enough that they served to reinforce my fears about self-aggrandizement. Or rather, about being judged as self-aggrandizing. I need to make a distinction there. But I guess the term itself is pejorative, so I need a better word to express a self-loving kind of self-promotion.
Anyway...
The first incident happened when I was around 7 or 8. We moved a lot when I was a kid. That year we had run away from a violent stepdaddy - literally left with nothing but the clothes on our backs - and were temporarily back in Seattle with the grandparents. I entered the 3rd grade already in progress at the school across the street from gramma's house. I was in a rocky emotional state, constantly afraid stepdaddy would show up and hurt us, and just generally fearful, especially of other kids. I was desperate to be liked, but had almost no social skills, and lacked the kind of confidence that makes kids like you.
The first week I was there the teacher announced we'd be doing a play, and we needed to pick parts. The part of the princess needed to be a blonde, she said, and so she had all the blonde girls come up to the front of the room. My hair, normally brownish, was sun-bleached from living in the sun in California, but I didn't think of myself as blonde. But the teacher called my name, and told me to stand up front with the others. The trauma of standing in front of the rest of the class was awful enough, but then the other girls started whispering about how I wasn't really a blonde and so I had no right to be in the running. I could feel my face getting redder and redder, and I remember wishing I could fall through a hole in the floor and just disappear.
I don't remember how the choosing happened. But somehow I was chosen. And my status immediately shifted from being the New Girl to being the Stuck-Up Phony-Blonde. I had a gaggle of instant enemies. The most popular girl in class was blonde of course, and all her friends hated me for her sake. Through the next few weeks, I learned how horrible it is to be visible and to be hated, especially for something you can't control and didn't ask for.
But the funny (sad?) thing was, I didn't remove myself. I didn't go to the teacher and ask to be replaced. I realize now that part of me was glorying in it. I remember flipping my long hair around during rehearsals, trying to act and look like I didn't care about the sniggering and whispering in the back of the room.
I did care, but ... it was an untenable choice. As much as I wanted them to like me, I also wanted that position of being the center of attention, of being the chosen one. There was no way to really win, not for me, not emotionally.
The second event took place much later. I was singing in a band, and one night we all went out to a local bar where they were having a Karaoke contest. On a lark, I entered, and I sang Crazy by Patsy Cline, a song I did every night with the band and knew well. I never really thought of winning, it was just a lark. And it never once crossed my mind that I shouldn't be entering the contest at all, but ... well, apparently others thought it wasn't fair.
When my name was announced as the winner, the protests started. Somebody on the other side of the bar shouted unfair, and some other people went to the host and complained that I shouldn't have been allowed to enter the contest. The poor man didn't need that kind of hassle, and I was immediately sorry for it. But he said that it was fair, that singing professionally gave me the same advantage as a non-professional who took voice lessons or sang all the time or was practiced at a certain song. Getting paid to sing had nothing to do with it, he said. I was grateful to him, but I couldn't take the glares and whispers, the angry energy pointed in my direction.
I left shortly after that. But I also left with the $20 prize money. I didn't turn it down, I didn't pull out of the contest. Part of me gloried in having won, in spite of the backlash.
Weird. Life's repeating patterns. No wonder my surface consciousness wants to say it doesn't matter. No wonder I'm afraid of self-promotion. It always seems to come back on me in a negative way. I hear the voices saying I don't have a right to it, or I shouldn't have been in the running, let alone win. I feel the hatred coming at me.
I know this is a reflection of *my* belief that I don't deserve it. And since I don't deserve it, being chosen will always mean somebody is going to hate me. It's a horrible conflict. The heart can't win.
So mostly I try not to put myself into competitions or contests. I try not to put myself forward that way, no matter how much I also long to be forward.
I want to be chosen.
I guess we all do.
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