Free from the shackles of my father's eyes
2002-11-20 @ 11:20 a.m.
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At some point when I was a kid my father began having me come up with my own punishments for misbehavior. Instead of being as creative as I'm capable of, I simply mimicked the punishments he was already in the habit of giving us: house restrictions, room restriction, television restrictions. And he always praised me for being harsher with myself than he would have. Gullible kid that I was, I took his praise to heart instead of the clue hidden in it. I continued to punish myself harshly whenever I was given the opportunity; two weeks confined to the house for being 30 minutes late for curfew instead of the one week he probably would have come up with.
It has occurred to me that maybe that has something to do with the way I beat myself up so cruelly when I make mistakes.
But there's more. I put myself under such stress to be perfect (perfect in his eyes then, perfect in the eyes of my loved ones now) that I can be hard on myself just for being less than perfect. Since it's impossible to be perfect in anyone's eyes, that's a lot of stress to live with.
Maybe it's time I cut myself some slack.
Ya think!
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