Dear Jasmine #22: In Pursuit of Repair
"Mend everything with the fervour of a medic. Use every last drop of kindness in your body like an ointment on yourself and others."
Question 22
Dear Jasmine,
I was recently told by my therapist a little bluntly but at the right time that I don’t know how to have interpersonal relationships. When we processed it a little further, I realised that most of my friendships are about competition, feeling inferior and analysing my place in that relationship. My romantic relationships always fail even though I crave them because I choose men [who] aren’t kind to me, I am scared of being vulnerable and being seen as ordinary. I hurt the people I love because I fear they’ll get up one day and brutally tell me I am equally messed up and remind me that they are kind enough to love and support me despite my hot and cold behaviour, my neediness, my messy-ness, my annoying habits. Now, I have been in therapy for a long time and done a lot of inner work. I also care about the people I love and am dependable. I am a half decent human being (I think). The fear that I’ll never be able to form a rather honest, kind, and warm relationship with anyone is scaring me and making me question everything I’ve ever done. The realisation is making me question the people who love me and I want to ask them…why the hell do you even love me? I am a horrible, horrible person at times and no one deserves to be guilted, blamed, or made to feel small ever. I am ashamed of my behaviour and I know that with actually putting in the effort and processing my own wounds I can become a better person but the thought of me being so toxic is sending me into a spiral and I can see myself sitting with guilt and shame. Do you think we can crave and feel deserving of love and care even when we know we shouldn't be loved and cared for? I feel like such a fool right now. Do we ever cross over to the kindness of the world battling our own shadows? I don’t know what the question is here or if I even make any sense at 2:30am on a Monday morning.
Thank you for listening.
— Little Miss Recovering Red Flag
Answer 22: In Pursuit of Repair
Dear Little Miss Recovering Red Flag,
Slow down. Slow down.
Come here, let me give you a hug, my little pebble. Having all those thoughts inside your snug heart and active mind must not be easy. Slow down a little. Have some water, if you will and give all this dispiriting 2:30am mental gymnastics a rest. Take it away from inside you, place it on a lemon-yellow pincushion, prick a pin inside it, and forget about it for a while. You and I are going to take a small detour from here on, Miss Red (that is my take-away from your name).
While I was reading your letter, I kept shaking my head — no, no, no — and I wished that you would be able to see from my perspective that your words made me want to hug you, to shovel your pain away, and open the windows to let the star light into the dark room from where you were writing to me. I had once read that you should not believe your own mind after 9pm. I have tried to follow that rule. It almost always works. If I am feeling inconsolable on any night and nothing seems to help, I go to sleep. When I wake up in the morning, I think to myself— well, it couldn’t be that bad. So, I am hoping that when daylight came, you let go of some of this unkindness you’ve been harbouring towards yourself because, Miss Red, it is not that bad.
Yes, your therapist told you some blunt truths. Some of your relationships are a reality TV contest. Your self-worth is in the toilet. We could agree that things are messed up all around, but what strikes me most about your letter is not the way you speak into the Dear Jasmine letterbox at 2:30am but the way you speak to yourself. I can’t be having that, little pebble. Not on my watch.
Tell me something. Despite all the therapy, all this inner work you said you’ve been doing, why do your therapist’s words make you feel like you’re the failure? Have you wondered whether your therapist is a good fit for you? I’m not insinuating that a licensed medical professional is incompetent. Also, I won’t assume that I know better than the honest-to-God stories about your life you’ve told your therapist. All I am asking is whether I am right in expecting that if one is continually working on something — be it pilates, PowerPoint, or painting— one should get better at it? Isn’t that the whole point of undertaking any activity for a prolonged period of time? To mindfully engage with it and eventually improve? If yes, and if you’ve matched with the right therapist, they should have helped you get better. If not, maybe your therapist is right and we can throw this whole conversation out of the window.
However, I find it difficult to believe you’re so far gone that we can’t bring you back. So, I am going to stick with you, Miss Red.
I feel a profound sense of sadness when you say that you’re not worthy of love and care because you’ve made mistakes in your life. It provides me proof of the meritocracy of love. Make no mistake, we have constructed this meritocracy. Do we have to earn love? I don’t think so. In fact, you would have to do tremendous work to make me believe that love must be achieved. I am certain that we don’t have to earn the right to be human. We don’t have to earn kindness, care, and love; they’re fundamental to our existence. This is my creed here on this column. It will always be.
We question whether we are worthy of love and care because the human capacity for repair is vastly diminished. We, as a human race, have forgotten what it truly means to mend anything that is broken. The language that we have around imperfection is a language of segregation, of refuse. We used to have the capacity to mend almost everything. We did. But now, whenever we have to repair something — be it our phone, our clothing, our appliances, our society, or our relationships, and even ourselves — we tend to think of it as defective instead of a whole that requires care and healing. And therein, my little pebble, lies the problem.
Repair is an act of ultimate acceptance. When we repair, we accept the whole with the wound, the damage. When we repair, we accept the change of the whole because of the wound, the damage. Repair is antithetical to the instant gratification world we live in. We have been taught that if something isn’t working, you can toss it out into your segregated waste bins and order another one. It is crazy to me how we apply this to almost everything in our lives as a reflex. The only thing this does is fill up proverbial landfills and increases the size of loneliness in the human heart. If there is a way of saving ourselves, each other, and our bruised interpersonal relationships, we have to start repairing all that has been broken. All that is mangled. All that is cracked. And that is hard work. But it is the work all of us need to do irrespective of where we are in our healing journey.
You, little pebble, need to start with yourself. I need you to repair the relationship you have with yourself. None of this self-deprecating whiplash will do. Accept yourself with your scars, your new self, and your messy, but worth-living life. Mend the way you see yourself. Stitch the parts that bleed. Accept the ghosts of the wounds you’re trying to get rid of. So what if you’re a little chipped here and there? So what if some relationships didn’t work out and you weren’t the best friend in the world? So what if you’re needy and messy? Aren’t we all? If you do not give yourself the acceptance you so badly need, you will keep seeking it from others. You will keep channelling your inadequacy into negative behaviours. And we don’t want that, do we?
Refurbish the way you see yourself in the mirror of your mind. You are not fractured, you are kaleidoscopic. The parts of yourself you see as mutilated don’t make you a monster, they just make you human. As long as you’re not inflicting unimaginable horrors on people and trying to be better, you’re okay Miss Red.
The fact that you’re admitting to doing inner work and sitting up at 2:30 am wondering what you should be doing differently tells me we can still steer this story away from the horrors you imagine. Remember that you are generous and self-aware. You are trying. And when you think about something over and over, it creates a groove inside your brain. Your brain starts to believe the things you say to it. Believing a negative narrative about yourself creates a pathway in your brain in which you tend to get stuck. Similarly, affirming yourself over and over creates a pathway that allows you to operate from a place of positive energy.
Plant seeds of flowers inside the negative grooves of your brain, Miss Red. No matter how hard, no matter the evidence against it, no matter how unbelievable, tell yourself the things you wish these people you’re “competing with” told you. Write down your affirmations and say them to yourself over and over. Or repeat after me —
I believe in healing more than I believe in pain.
I cherish my blessings; the unsung warriors against the bitterness of life.
I free myself from the burden of perfectionism.
I wholly accept my wounds and my wins.
I remain open to building the muscle for forgiveness and healing.
I remove myself from environments where my steps don’t fit into the overall dance.
I choose to be more than my shortcomings.
I champion the cause of repair; I walk out of my house with a sewing kit full of pretty threads.
I admit that I need to do better; then, I do better.
I surrender to the storytelling of the universe, letting go of the default storyline I’ve assumed.
After you start to patch your image of yourself, remember that your relationships need patching up, too. You know how we say that we were taught everything in school except practical life-skills? I have to agree. We were never taught how to resolve conflict, how to agree to disagree, how to mend without severing ties. I strongly believe that any relationship’s sustainability can be measured by how well people resolve conflict. The fact that we were not taught this is showing up in adult life and creeping out from all the cracks in our society everywhere you look. We are losing friends, families, lovers, civil rights, and even human lives over our inability to mend what conflict tears apart. So, find out what are the conflicts in your own relationships worth resolving. Take an online class or two if need be. Begin the work of repair over the fabric of your life assuming that it is a dug up city that needs a major overhaul. Start inwards and go outwards to your life.
Those who say they care for you are your real people, Miss Red. They know what they’re doing. Hold them close, and give them the love they rightly deserve. If you feel they shouldn’t “be guilted, blamed, or made to feel small ever”, then don’t do it. It will seem absolutely crazy but you can stop doing all of those things by choosing one kind action over an unkind one. Pause, breathe, and reflect before you say or do things. Slowing down your breathing and living will allow you to reflect before acting and it will change a whole slew of things. We live so fast that we are unable to allow our brains to catch up to our reactions. Give your body space, let your emotions be in tandem with you. Choose to respond instead of react. Try it, little pebble, and see how you feel.
Finally, stop trying to be an idealised version of your own twisted imagination to aspire to be loved. Love is not a report card handed out every three months based on how you’ve performed. You deserve love irrespective of how “horrible” you are, and more so if you’re the worst person in the world. There are many people who do unspeakable horrors to others all because they weren’t loved or accepted when they needed it. As long as you’re not using your trauma and therapy misspeak to exert control and power on your relationships, your repair efforts will go a long way in the journey of healing.
Snap out of this trap of treating your life like an examination. Love is not meant to be achieved. It is meant to be given freely and received in whatever form others send it your way. You do not get to decide how people love. You only get to decide how to scatter your affection in your surroundings.
Outgrow your need to perform for life. Unchain yourself from trying to be someone you’re not. Mend everything with the fervour of a medic. Use every last drop of kindness in your body like an ointment on yourself and others.
Repairing will make the existing sufficient. You will feel adequate. People will feel enough. Your life will become abundant.
Get out of this funk, Miss Red. The sun is shining. Go and breathe into the sky.
Love,
Jasmine
Dear Jasmine is a monthly column by an anonymous writer. If any of you want to send in questions, please send them to Jasmine here.