This is my 666th blog post, so in honor of that number, I am going to try to unpack some of the diabolical thoughts I have.
I am a deeply insecure person. About literally everything. About my body, my social skills, my appearance, my lack of artistic and musical ability, my athleticism, my writing skills, my intellectual chops, my fashion sense, and anything else. I'm confident in my editing abilities, but even then I have my moments.
And there are things that I believe about myself, even though I logically know they are not true. I believe that my opinions don't matter, that I have less worth and value than everyone else, and that not only am I unlovable, but I'm undeserving of love. Like I said, I know these aren't true, but I can't just make myself believe otherwise. I've spent some time trying to figure out where these ideas came from.
I think some of them came from my position as the youngest in my family by quite a bit. When you are a young child surrounded by teenagers and adults, you learn that your interests and desires don't apply to everyone else. For example, when I was around five years old, which would have made my siblings twelve and fourteen, we were out our grandparents' house. Grandma asked, "Do you want to play a game?" and I enthusiastically responded, "Duck duck goose!" They said, "No, like a card game," and I felt dumb for making my suggestion. Now, of course grandmas and teenagers don't want to play duck duck goose. But at five years old, card games didn't mean anything to me. I say this not to shame my family, just to point out the reality of my situation.
And I still don't know how much this affected me, but it certainly wasn't helpful to grow up in a heteronormative society that told me something was wrong with me if I didn't like girls. If I was attracted to a man, I thought that was Satan tempting me. And I also picked up a notion that Satan didn't have power to tempt people in the temple. So if I was in the temple doing baptisms for the dead and was attracted to boys, then that meant I was inherently evil, because Satan didn't have power to tempt me there.
I always planned and expected to marry a woman, but I thought I was inadequate and undesirable for most women. When I was a teenager, a Sunday School teacher asked us to come up with the desired traits of our future spouse, and I said mine "would have to like me." When I was in college, local Church leaders would tell us, "Brethren, you need to ask girls on dates! They are crying on their pillows at night because they aren't being asked out!" I would think, "That might apply to other guys, but not to me. If a girl had to choose between spending a Friday night at home alone or spending it with me, she would rather spend it alone." And as recently as 2021, I would often think, "I should ask this girl out. But she's just way out of my league."
As I think back on these stellar women, I realize I thought they were out of my league because I wasn't actually interested in them. If they had been men—just as good-looking, just as kind, just as talented—would I have thought they were out of my league? No, I wouldn't—at least not as much as when they're women.
Additionally, in junior high and high school, I didn't have any close friends. I had people I would talk to at school, but no one outside of that. When I was in high school, I convinced myself that everyone hated me. Looking back, I think that was an overreaction—but it wasn't entirely unfounded. In six years of junior high and high school, I literally never hung out with anyone outside of school or church activities. The closest thing was when a guy invited himself to my house so I could tutor him in math. I think it was easier to make a blanket statement that everyone hated me by default than it was to figure out why I didn't have any friends and what I could do about it.
Because of this, I effectively shut people out. If people were friendly to me, I would tell myself, "They're just being polite. They don't actually want to be my friend." And I wouldn't allow a friendship to develop.
I'm not a kid anymore, so my thinking has changed. But elements of these ideas still affect me. I legitimately don't understand why anyone would want to be my friend, so I appreciate that people are. I have friends of varying degrees of closeness, but I haven't had a best friend since elementary school. When people say positive things to me or about me, I find it startling. Why would people think or say that?
These ideas have had real-world implications for me. They affected my participation grades in grad school. I think they have affected career opportunities. (And, thankfully, they partly prevented me from getting married.)
But! This post is not meant to be a downer or to evoke sympathy or to fish for compliments. I am actively working to overcome these ideas. If I have an opinion or an idea, I am more likely to bring it up, instead of hoping someone else will. I'm trying to reach out to more people, not worrying that I am bothering them. If they are dismissive of me, I won't waste my time with them. I attend group therapy every week and individual therapy every other week so I can practice these skills—"taking up space," we call it. In other words, I am allowing myself to matter. It's a work in progress, but it's still progress.
Not today, Satan!
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