"I'm afraid I'm going to flunk out of university," my daughter confessed to me, her face masked by the darkness but her voice shaking. She lay in her bed and I sat beside her. She's home for her fall reading week, sick with strep throat, sick with worry.Her grades have been great so far, even with her clinical anxiety acting up, even with her doctor weaning her off her anti-anxiety meds because they're not doing the job. Even with moving to a huge new city, two hours from home, from family, from friends, from everything that's familiar.
"What is your source of information," a friend used to ask the newly sober poet and memoirist Mary Karr, whenever she confided some fear that she was a failure, a fraud, not worth anyone's love or affection.
How many of us ask ourselves that question when we're awake in bed at 3 a.m. telling ourselves stories about how superior the Other Woman was sexually, or how much prettier she was, or smarter. Do we ask ourselves that when we imagine our husband and the Other Woman/Women laughing at our ignorance of the affair? Do we ask ourselves that when we freeze socially, convinced that everyone around us is secretly rolling their eyes at us?
I didn't. I believed every soul-destroying lie I told myself.
What is your source of information?
It's tricky ground. Betrayal creates enormous doubt in ourselves, in our ability to judge for ourselves what's safe, who can be trusted. But even as we begin to doubt our judgement, we nonetheless believe every conspiracy theory we tell ourselves.
What is your source of information?
If it's you and it casts you in an unforgiving light, then don't believe a word of it.
If it's you and it's based on the midnight wanderings of a battle-weary brain, don't believe a word of it.
If it's you and it leads only to self-doubt, self-blame and shame, then don't believe a word of it.
If your friends would look at you as if you were crazy for believing it, don't. If you're afraid to say it out loud because you know it would sound crazy, then don't believe it.
What is your source of information?
If your response is, "I thought it up", well...you know what to do with it.
