I used to be an awful cynic. Worse than cynical…dark. The kind of dark that could suck all the fun out of a room full of happy people.
I’m not that person any more.
A lot of this is family-of-origin-related stuff. My mother was a very strong personality and she was often super dark (she was actually very likely bipolar, but that’s for another day). She was also very conditional in her loving. You were either with her or against her and against carried the high risk of being excommunicated, cut-off. And she could blame and guilt like a frightening combo of the worst of the Jewish and Catholic mother stereotypes.
Since my parents divorced when I was very young (like 4), back when custody was almost always given to the mom, she was my primary caregiver and influence. As a result, her darkness became my darkness. My next older sibling fully drank that Kool-Aid and between the two of them, a happy-go-lucky Leslie didn’t stand a chance.
It was framed as sophistication; being precocious (in the case of us kids); being smart and witty. In reality, it was just fear wearing a mask. If we put down X or Y then, if we weren’t good at it, that didn’t matter because it was beneath us so pushing ourselves to be better at those things was, well, stupid. We were something special, more, smarter, better. The rules for most people should not apply to us. “Don’t be a sheep!” Mom would often say. We were being trained to become narcissists of some flavor (mostly of the covert variety as we were also told not to be selfish and “just who do you think you are?!” …yeah, confusing!). The world owed us…more, better. If something went wrong, it was not our fault or our doing; the world did it to us. We were victims of a world where everyone and everything was out to get us. Fear, fear, fear.
Luckily for me, I had my darkness (and its snobbery, false victimhood, etc.) called out by a trusted friend. He could see I was miserable and he put the pieces together and kindly mentioned that he thought I was making myself miserable. His simple comment raised my awareness, one day in the studio where we worked together; and it changed my life.
Since then, and with much work and hours on the cushion, I have become a very different person. I am by nature now mostly happy, or at least content. I have been told I am fun to be around (hearing that still makes me blush). I don’t believe the world owes me anything but rather I make choices and accept the ramifications/responsibility arising from those choices. I earn my successes and live with my failures. I am courageous, but I don’t take myself too seriously. When I feel myself struggling, I ask for help (friends, therapists, etc.). I am not transactional in any of my relationships (I give because I want to, not expecting something in return). Most of all, I am incredibly less judgmental than I was in my youth, which is probably my favorite part of all this because it gives me the chance to be, instead, curious, especially about other people. Turns out, I actually like most people!
I’ll tell you what: it’s a hell of a lot better way to be. Shit is going to happen in life–learning from it and looking at what I can do about it (versus obsessing about what I can’t), and not wallowing and blaming, is infinitely better. When bad things happen now, I roll with it (mostly). I even have people tell me how calm I seem in those times! Sure, I still get angry or sad or hurt, but the volume is much lower on any of that than it was in my dark youth.
Am I perfect? Not even close. But I’m better. And every day I’m a little more so. I”m super lucky: at 60, I still get to experience growth.