my_experiment_with_good_enough magicforest “Cordelia brings a mirror to school. It’s a pocket mirror, the small plain oblong kind without any rim. She takes it out of her pocket and holds the mirror up in front of me and says, ‘Look at yourself! Just look!’ Her face is disgusted, fed up, as if my face, all by itself, has been up to something, has gone too far. I look into the mirror but I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. It’s just my face, with the dark blotches on the lips where I’ve bitten off the skin.” – Margaret Atwood, “Cat’s Eye” I used to be the happiest at home, until I found out that in reality I was not good enough. So I did everything to make myself good enough. Come straight home from school and go out to walk the dog. Come back. Feed the dog and give her water inside and outside. Clean the coffee table, the computer table, above the television set, the kitchen table, the counters, do everyone’s breakfast dishes, clean out the dishrack, do everything just the way she wants you to, be neat and tidy and prompt. The first day when she came home, looked around, and said nothing, I thought perhaps I hadn’t done it well enough, I should have straightened the shoes more, or taken out the garbage? So the second day I straightened the shoes and took out the garbage, but I forgot to bring home the university catalogs from school. So she yelled at me and cried in front of her. I hate doing that because she thinks that when I cry, I am trying to manipulate her, so it makes her more angry. Only this time she apologized, which surprised me. It didn’t last. I always forgot something, either from the old list, or from new things she was adding that I should have done. I was confused about two things: if these things were so simple, why did I keep forgetting them or doing them wrong? And secondly, if these were so simple, why was she so angry when I didn’t do them? It must be a combined thing: I forget them, she is angry, because they were simple in the first place. I began to develop a serious faith in my own stupidity. I had to be a pretty dumb person to mess up so often. Dumb people make mistakes. Dumb people are irresponsible. I am the happiest at work. I used to be the happiest at school, until I found out that in reality, my grades weren’t good enough. So I did everything to make myself good enough. I worked on my Biology more and I stayed after school when I didn’t understand something. I took better notes. I studied. I cancelled plans with friends. But I didn’t get better marks in Biology. My science teacher was right: it was the hardest unit, and it was normal for everyone to start off with a lower mark than usual. And when we finished that unit and my mark went from an 83 to an 87, I was proud of myself. Last night my mother told me truth. She was one who got me my job; because she pushed me. She was the reason I got my mark up in Biology; because she pushed me. She was the reason I brought my catalogs home; because she pushed me. And she told me that I should never be so ungrateful as to disparage her for pressuring me again. Because she is the Mother and I am the Child. Because every time she pressures me it is for my own good. It is guiding. It is a sign of how much she cares. That is why she won’t stop pressuring me. “For my own good? You make me want to kill myself!” I say and lose all control. Oh dear. Now I have become emotionally politically-incorrect. Because she doesn’t make me feel anything. It’s up to me whether or not I listen every time she sticks a snide comment about my failures into the conversation, as subtle as a knife into butter, silent but you know it’s sitting there, sinking in, chiselling you away softly. It is up to me how I feel. I am trying to relieve myself of my own emotional responsibility. I really am stupid. Not only was that a poor tactic, it was immature of me. Add immature to the plate. So I shouldn’t listen to her. I will say this though, even if it’s disgusting blamery: it’s hard to see your faults projected every day from your mother’s overhead right onto the slideshow of your eyes. If you tell a kid every day that he sucks, eventually he’ll start believing it. She says that she is the reason for the successes in my life. I am the reason for the failures in my life. At one point she threw her hands up and demanded, “What do you think responsibility is?” (She feels a maternal duty to infuse me with her values and morals before releasing my ugliness onto the world. This is what is known as feeling responsible for someone. Call it love.) And I said, “Doing everything perfectly.” She didn’t understand what I meant and she thought I was mouthing off. Mom, I am working so hard to get your approval… I am working so hard so that you will love me… I don’t want you to be ashamed of me anymore… I wish I could let you read this. But you would think I was trying to make you feel guilty. And you’d be right. Every time you tell me that I’m a failure and worthless and vile and disgusting and I don’t understand you but I believe you…I want you to suffer. Mostly because it’s my fault for believing. Today I prayed to God to take me away from the house. I prayed because I had to believe that there is a benevolent energy outside of my self that can take care of the things I feel like I can’t…call it an insecurity crutch, I know…but everyone must have faith in something, and when I don’t have faith in myself I must have it in something else…so I prayed…and minutes later my coworker called me and asked if I could come to work because she felt suddenly stricken with a migraine. So I went to work and found out I had received a raise and my boss was going to start training me in the morning so that I can work all shifts… I know that I’m not good enough, but I don’t know why. PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TO DO SO THAT I CAN BE GOOD ENOUGH. 031224 ... endless desire if_only_if_only 031225 ... magicforest you_ARE_we_ARE 031225 ... birdmad in which i am neither hyposthesis nor result but merely one of the control samples 031225 ... x failed miserably i'm a long_distance_runner 031225 ... Death of a Rose in consideration of values, limericks are found peeing on the lawn. 031226 ... minnesota_chris magicforest? Is that your writing, and your feelings? Are you really asking for advice? It seems like you're halfway down the path of figuring it out anyways. It would do me good to be dating someone. Not somebody perfect, but someone good enough. Someone I could make happier, and someone who would be good for me. 031227 ... sometimes_she wants to scream I_AM_ENOUGH. 031228 ... z good enough is never good enough 060708 ... nom never_enough 060709 ... LS Noones perfect. Perfect denies change, and everything is always changing. I suppose I would be happy if I could direct the change toward something I would want to be. 060709 ... z perfect adaptabillity perfect metamorphosis perfect decline 060710 what's it to you? who go blather from