You know, I give myself a lot of crap. And unnecessarily so. Recently, I was reading some of my old blog entries from ~2 years ago - they are fraught with second-guessing and self-doubt (the bane of my existence). But I realized something, reading them from this perspective/distance/what-have-you. I didn’t give myself nearly enough credit. All the shit I was going through then… Jesus H., I did a damn good job of handling it, and I was am a really strong person. There have been several points in my life where I’ve had this revelation after the fact. I’ve certainly gotten a lot better about trusting myself and not letting other people’s noise drown out what my intuition is telling me. But it’s something I still struggle with at times.
Anyway… why did I feel like I needed to “rush” the process I was going through, back then? (And I recognize that I am still dealing with and coming out of everything that’s happened.) I just felt so much pressure from all sides. But you know, realistically… finding out that your husband wants to become a woman is a big damn deal, and I should be able to take my sweet time in “getting over” it. And looking back, I can hardly believe the grace with which I handled everything (though of course it didn’t feel like it at the time).
So, in summation: I rock, dammit. And I should be able to say that without feeling that little pang of, “Shut up you selfish bitch!” inside.
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31 Responses to "Self-Affirmation, Dammit"
*[a]nd I should be able to say that without feeling that little pang of, “Shut up you selfish bitch!” inside.*
(If you ever seriously figure out how to reconcile this, _completely_, then the world will end, because you will have solved one of the biggest problems of the human condition).
Fuck what everyone else thinks.
And if you ever figure out how to do that, tell me.
That’s part of it.
I”m listening to R.E.M. “These Days” right now and thinking about ya.
(Like a part of Zeno’s Paradox).
Nice blog. I like it.
Just push those feelings of self doubt out of your head. There is no value in such ideas.
Self doubt’s gonna keep her ass in check, if she doesn’t let it sweep her away in the end.
It’s figuring out the middle ground, that’s such a pain in the ass.
NO value in self doubt? Interesting point. You can be more precise than “no value”, right? Or is this a place of phrases?
Sorry Amber. I feel like I’m putting my dick in wet cement again. I’ll pull back and let the comments run their course.
Keep my ass in check, huh? Wow, Zagursky, I’m glad you think you know soooo much about how my ass needs to be marshalled. Nice to meet you, too, and fuck you very much!
Ken: “These Days’ in a great song. As for putting your dick in wet cement… well, if it’s going to be that kind of party…
It’s actually not that hard. You really just have to realize that it really doesn’t matter what other people think. And if it does you just have to ask yourself, “Does it really?” And usually even then, it doesn’t really. It’s great.
It’s a good day for that phrase, apparently.
On my blog you wrote:
“Yo. Sad how you have to justify your career in porn, isn’t it? One day, maybe, the rest of the world will catch up.”
I don’t justify anything, Amber. I feel no guilt about what I do. I’m not hampered by the “values” of our religious right. I am one of those people who accepts the sexuality of everyone. More than 92% of men and 72% of women in this country use porn. I think the realistic numbers are even higher than that.
And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with it! It’s okay!
I’d recommend reading a bit more of my entries before making a judgement call. You just might be impressed. Who knows.
No, I think you took what I said the wrong way… gah… I wasn’t saying anything bad about you, I was saying it’s sad that we live in a judgemental culture that automatically thinks porn == bad. Oh damn, never mind… I’m probably just doing an even worse job now of explaining what I mean… it’s late…
I didn’t mean it that way, but it’s nice that you attacked so quickly.
Lemme re-write it this way: self doubt keeps peoples’ asses in check, if they don’t let it sweep them away in the end. People with no self-doubt fuck up a lot, because there’s nothing there to make them think about their decisions.
I give up on this.
Heh. Well, people keep talking about putting their dick and/or balls into/onto things; what am I supposed to do?
Jesus tap dancing Christ, people… Everyone’s getting offended…
Donovan. Amber said “It’s sad that you have to justify…” with the implication that it’s a sad state of affairs when the judgemental crowd seemingly requires you to do so, and she also offered hope for the future that one day other people will be as enlightened as you are. (Hint: Dollars to donuts she’s actually empathizing with you, as she’s probably felt exactly the same way before about her own sexual proclivities)
Amber. Adam makes a good point about self-doubt. I seriously doubt that he was saying that you specifically need to have your ass marshalled into line by gnawing self-doubt. As a safety mechanism, self-doubt can help us question our confidence in a very valid way if we don’t let it get out of hand.
Can’t we all just chill the fuck out?
I would comment but I’m doubting myself as to whether it would make sense to anyone or not.
Garrett: I just feel it is my duty to jump all over Zagursky’s shit whenever the mood strikes.
Surprisingly, I agree with Garrett on both points.
Well, you’re just a little ol’ girl there, Amber, your ass needs to be in check, that’s what the patriarchy and self-doubt are ALL ABOUT.
But, I think the gist of what he’s saying is that, as in all things, moderation in confidence and arrogance are GOOD THINGS. Just look at Chimpy.
Moderation in all things, but most especialliy in moderation.
I’m sorry, that phrase is offensive to our lord and savior. The new phrasolgy is “Jesus titty-fucking Christ.”
Thank you. That is all.
I prefer Jesus salad-tossing Christ.
The most shocking thing I’ve heard all day, Jen. ;)
Perhaps the pressure to rush through the process was the result of an overwhelming pressure in the culture of the United States to avoid the appearance of struggling with issues, to avoid weaknesses, to avoid humiliation. Even the slogans of not giving a fuck what other people are a part of this, in that the cultivation of a stoic indifference to the fact of other people is a means to avoid having to communicate with them, possibly even risk being accused, whether justly or not, by them. My thought is that a person who truly did not give a fuck about other people would not have to suggest that or be concerned with that, and, what’s more, could quite easily demonstrate compassion regardless of what that other person thought or said. Afterall, if one did not give a fuck about that other person’s opinions and rants and suggestions and criticisms, then one simply has no investment in their offering or their absence whatsoever, meaning one does nothing specifically for courting or drawing them, but can do anything at all for and with that other person, including being gracious, malicious, comforting, biting.
Um, what US culture is that? Becuase it’s obviously not the US with Oprah, Phil Donahue and Jerry Springer that *I* know. Are you living in some bizarro US in which people DON’T air their dirty laundry (and the dirty laundry of anyone with any sort of celebrity status) to the whole world?
I apologize. I completely misread what was written. It was so clear, now that I re-read it after Garrett’s post.
Sorry… I’m rather used to having to defend myself. :)
Bite me.
I don’t think I live in a bizarro United States, although with the recent elections this is not certain. I don’t think that Amber is a part of the Oprah, Phil, Jerry culture, but then I don’t think they represent a rejection of what I am saying. Airing dirty laundry, you see, is entirely a part of the same cultural reaction against the fact of human misery: the dramatization of struggle in the form of eating disorders, marital infidelities, unruly children, high prices on consumer products, &tc is a caricature of actual, identifiable suffering, meant as spectacle in the same way that the light show of the Great and Powerful Oz was meant as spectacle. It is a distraction for the contemporary middle class, to absorb them into the belief that the really great problems in life now are the problems we’d find on these shows. The humiliation that we see on Springer, for example, is an artifice and a show: the real humiliation of the poverty in the United States, in Africa, in Central Asia is too unbearable to behold—except in well-crafted commercialization politicizing the bodies of these souls as distant and suffering others. These two acts, together, complete the distancing of suffering away from and out towards the margins, whether as freaks on reality shows or thin blacks backgrounding concert stages.
It’s not always the case that immersion is acceptance of a thing.