judgment

I realize I am terribly constrained by fear of judgment. I am ashamed of myself, in everything I do, not because what I do is shameful. But because I have been too many times hurt by others’ judgment that had little to do with who and what I really am.

I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about Twin Peaks and David Lynch’s other works. Even now I fear you — the abstract “you” — rolling your eyes. The baggage around a name. The takeaways. My demographics intersecting with stereotypes intersecting with partial experience.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts about a lot of topics as I’ve pored over texts, commentaries, and ephemera. And yet it’s been almost impossible for me to share any of it, here or otherwise, because I’m
ashamed of finding it interesting in the first place. I have become afraid of being interested in the “wrong” things, and unconsciously come to believe that most of what I find interesting is going to be dismissed by others.

It’s a strange feeling! What’s it based on? Definitely parental judgment, the specter of which I still can’t escape. Definitely the ambient and observed reactionary tone of so much public, social discourse. The utter lack of patience with something that has been filed as Bad. It’s exhausting.

I make too many of my decisions, or short-circuit the deciding, because I just can’t bear to have someone tell me I’m wrong when they aren’t actually listening to me. I can be wrong! I’m wrong a lot. I learn constantly. But at a certain point, the weight of being dismissed without being heard or interpreted accurately, no matter how clearly I tried to speak — which connects to so many pains and setbacks —

It was too much. It affects my ability to simply converse and correspond. A feeling that I have to produce a Good statement, when I have a decreasing sense that it’s even possible, due to my own internal jumble.

Just describing a problem and thinking of how to do otherwise.