I can’t help but wonder if I had been born a few years later, would I have fallen into the diagnosis trap? You know what I’m talking about. That moment in time where every other kid has some kind of DSM diagnosis to pigeonhole their “personality” as some sort of explained deficiency like ADD.
As someone who understands what those diagnosis are like, I’m fairly confident that an overzealous doctor would have totally put me in the OCD camp. Even as an adult, I can’t help but wonder if such a diagnosis could have helped me maintain some sense of focus and structure with my life.
I don’t get distracted easily but my butterfly is definitely there and incognito with her metamorphosis self.
I think my butterfly manifests herself in a different way. She wears the cloak of a butterfly but her true identity is rooted in something much darker.
She’s like the Persephone of my subconscious. Hidden but not forgotten, planting seeds that would grow into thoughts that become the weeds of indecision. That’s the only way I can try to make sense of why I have the tendency to break that which is not broken, for the sheer joy of being some sort of handy-girl who solves problems that didn’t need fixing.
“I’m not “that” girl” is something I tell myself over and over. Yet over and over I prove that the mind is a powerful weapon that can either save us or destroy us.
How does one determine the difference between improving on something and just plain self-sabotaging for the sake of living up to some warped self-fulfilling prophecy?
In my narrative, I am not supposed to be the victim but in every story there needs to be a protagonist and some sort of obstacle to overcome. So I create these illusions to live up to and when they play out in real life, the fallout is sometimes unbearable. “But that’s the point” I’ll convince myself. A heroine cannot become victorious without having fought off some adversaries, even if the source of conflict is with one’s self.
I judge people on the actions they take, not the intentions they have. Maybe this makes me too judgemental. I’m ok with it. I’ve struggled with having standards of others, not because they don’t live up to them, but because I need a baseline for which to judge myself against.
So I’ll break things that don’t need to be broken. Like a mischievous child, breaking things can be fun until you get cut with it. Then the pieces that need to be put back together are ourselves and when there’s shattered parts all around, it gets harder to put the pieces back together…Or so I’m told.