Conform/Rebel

Damn it. I thought I was over this. I just got up from a bad dream:

I was playing baseball at school. I was playing a base. I miss catching the ball every time. So embarrassed. When I throw the ball, it doesn't go where I want it to. Too weak. More embarrassment. I'm feeling really shitty. My heart pounds hard as the spotlight is on me to perform. I awake with the pounding heart.

There's nothing more painful than social impotence. Conformity is safe. To follow the herd means to be protected from being stampeded. But when I can't catch up, it is embarrassing. I do get run over. The pressure builds to conform and perform better. I fail again due to the pressure, and the pressure only builds.

Another part of me rebels to preserve the kernel of individuality. But the rebellion itself is taking up so much energy that I don't have any to expend on real self-expression.

To one not suffering from this double-bind, the solution seems so obvious and easy. Just let go of the conform/rebel complex and be myself. Yet the more I push it away, the harder it rebounds, or the more insidiously it pervades another part of my life. It's one of those soul fragments that scream for attention and only the proper kind, but what is the proper response? The mere knowledge of their existence does little to mitigate them.

So I try dialogue.

I asked that part of me why it was there. It means to protect me from the stampede. It means to find for me the apparent peace and good fortune of the "normal." They do look relatively confident. It wants me to be like that. It wants their nonchalance. It wants their free expressiveness. It wants their friends and their toys.

The other part hates the normal. It sees the normal as a bully, trying to squish all real self-expression, allowing only for that which fits within their parameters. It projects its own repression on others, seeing them as cowardly automatons following a script. It responds with anger and vindictiveness toward authoritative attempts to confine it. It uses the little remaining brainpower I have to rationalize political and religious views that maintain its position as victim of the mainstream. It wants to change the world because it doesn't fit into this one.

You're both crazy. Thank you for your time, but I don't need your "help" any more. If you would please leave, I could get on with my life and great achievements, after which I'll buy you guys a drink for your attempted assistance. Okay, bye now. "No!" they respond.

Breathe in slowly. Breathe out. Letting go of thoughts run amok, giving despair a blank look when she visits. The thoughts come back; let go again. Rinse, tumble, repeat. What else is there to do?