Life used to be an endless parade of effort to fix and compensate for my destructive and reprehensible character traits.  While it is tempting to believe that the only problem there was self-loathing, I don’t actually believe that was true.  I was sporting a good portfolio of legitimately gross and crazy personal habits and challenges, both self-destructive and hard on people around me.  I’m not special that way.  We all have them.  But it is with some pride that I will say that I may have been a little crazier than the average bear.

I found the reality of dealing with my character flaws to be so all-encompassing that I just assumed that life would be a march toward an unreachable finish line of unattainable okay-ness – an ongoing practice of getting a little better, but always generally sucking and being a basket case.

But that didn’t turn out to be true. While I am currently still plenty messy and flawed, each of my arguably unsavory qualities exists at a civilized volume level and has some valuable purpose that I wouldn’t trade.  So while these traits may create trouble for certain people or situations (sorry y’all!), they always show up with an irreplaceable upside for me, and I like that.  I have even developed some new terrible qualities that I totally dig, and I feel confident that I will invent even more.

Here are just a few of the beautiful and useful ways I suck:

I reject people.  I am ruthlessly discerning in the early stages of knowing people and look for reasons to cut them out of my circles.  This is important and useful for me.  I am very lucky to have a lot of choices about who is in my world.  I don’t lack potential friends or companionship.  And knowing that another one of my dangerous and beautiful character traits is that it is massively painful for me to lose people I care about, it is valuable and important to me to push people away early if they aren’t a wise investment.  It saves me mess and pain in the long term and keeps me from wasting investments of time and love or misleading people and hurting them later on.  This ties into my general practice of being a quitter.

I leave people.  This is a little different.  This is the loyalty of leaving people I love.  This is the very arduous and painful act of believing in love that is bigger than this lifetime and the fear that comes with it.  It is choosing myself and the person I love when a situation threatens one or both of us.  I like that I am this way.  It is hard.  It hurts.  I never stop missing these people or wishing they would meet me back at the table to make things right.  I have also never regretted one of these choices.

I am slow.  Say something objectionable to me.  Fight with me.  Hurt me.  I won’t know how to respond right away.  It may take me days to figure it out.  But I will wait until the fear and reactivity burns off and I get to what feels like truth before I come to the table to start to sort it out.  This will frustrate and maybe infuriate you, but when I show up, I will bring my full commitment to seeing your experience and understanding my own needs and position.  And if you will meet me part way, I will stay in it with you until it is solved, even if we never get there.  The decisions I make slowly come with very deep roots.

I am cold.  When I get overwhelmed, my heart runs and hides and my brain tries to take over.  This is incredibly useful in a crisis.  If the building is burning down, you want me around.  If you are having an intensely emotional experience that involves me somehow, you probably don’t.  But accepting this has brought me a beautiful humility and some tools for expressing love that I wouldn’t trade for anything.  Because I know that my head and heart will stop talking to each other under threat, I get to choose one.  And I have learned to choose my heart in the right moment and bring it out fully raw, with no words or clarity to clothe its nakedness.  In the right hands, showing up in this way opens the door to rich connection.

I am sensitive.  The reason my cold logic does so much work is that I am massively sensitive to my own experiences and to the experiences of other people.  Hurt does not just roll off me.  It burrows into me.  But dealing with that has forced me to become resilient, which I have come to believe is the most useful and versatile superpower possible.  Resilience is the vaccine for any type of fear.  You can dive in, be hurt again and again, and just get back up.  I don’t want to be a person who learns to ignore hurt – mine or anyone else’s.  Hurt means investment.  You hurt because you showed up.  Hurt is a badge of achievement and sensitivity is a channel for information.  Resilience is the companion that turns hurt into meaning.

I am shallow.  I like beautiful things.  I like them because they are beautiful.  But I also like them because they make me feel superior sometimes.  If I didn’t have any of them, I would be fine and still feel good about myself.  When someone else doesn’t have them, it doesn’t stop me from finding wonderful and valuable things in them.  But given the option, I’ll take my personal growth with a side of Italian sports car, thank you.

I am a terrible project manager.  This is a newly acquired jewel in my crown.  I used to be an awesome project manager.  I also used to be short-sighted, rigid, neurotic, controlling, and terrified.  Now I am none of those things.  And I drop balls.  Because I don’t care.  Ha!  So hire me a project manager, because I never want to be good at it again.

I can honestly say that starting out with an extra helping of crazy has been to my advantage.  I’m calling this project done.  Let my project manager deal with the rest.  I’m going for a drive.