There is Something Deeply Ok With Me

This might come off as corny and made up, but I swear this revelation came to me in a dream. I had taken 10 mg of THC before bed to help me sleep and I dreamed that I was in someone's living room hanging out with a group of people who were all being really nice to me and enjoyed my company. I didn't feel any pressure to entertain or impress them, they were just happy to have me around whether we were talking to each other or doing separate things. I knew it was a dream, but I felt so good about myself that I woke up and reached for my phone to type out what felt like the central message of the dream: "There is something deeply ok with me."

As I closed my eyes to doze back to sleep, I thought about the contradictory self-worth messages I had grown up with: the Christian doctrine that humans are made in the divine image of God, but also that every person is born damned by original sin. I haven't been a Christian for a long time, but maybe this was on my mind because of the recent news story about a priest who had performed thousands of invalid baptisms by saying 1 wrong word. Imagine going to hell on a technicality like that.

I'm not here to argue theology. I have no interest in it anymore. If your response to this is to argue about what interpretation of Christian doctrine is actually correct, I don't want to be a part of that conversation. It would benefit me as much as trying to explain the grammar of a language I have no intention of learning. All I'm here to talk about is how my upbringing affected the development of my psyche and how I've learned to make sense of the world and my place in it from a secular perspective.

So I grew up believing that both of those extreme perspectives about myself were true. I was special and holy and loved by the ultimate power in the universe, but I was also wretched and full of sin and deserved eternal punishment for my failures to live up to the right standards. Even after I became an atheist, those mental habits persisted; reinforced by the secular messaging I was receiving in school. That I was a "gifted kid." I went to college 2 years early, entering a program focused on propelling young people into STEM careers. But by the time I was just 19 and a junior in college, my mental health struggles had started having a negative effect on my grades. I was halfway through a bachelor's degree, I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and felt like I had no time to decide. I was out of general requirement classes and needed to specialize for a major RIGHT NOW. I tried 2 semesters of computer engineering out of desperation. It didn't help, and the panic and terror of failure brought me to the brink of suicide.

I ultimately decided to take some time off school to clarify what I wanted out of life. Such a vague goal didn't get me very far in finding a college major, but I did learn how to take care of myself financially and hold a full time job. That didn't feel like much as I watched my peers graduate, get high paying jobs, or travel to exotic locations. I felt like I was wasting this great potential inside of me, but also like I was clearly worthless and stupid and could never succeed if this was all I had to show for myself by now.

My depression and anxiety remained constant even as I returned to college, finished a degree in biology, and got a job in my field over the next or 4 years. I still didn't feel good enough. My job wasn't anything impressive. I had so little disposable income that I never felt comfortable asking anybody out on dates because I felt like I wouldn't be able to pay for whatever entertainment someone would need to want to hang out with me. I avoided catching up with old friends because I felt inferior compared to what they had accomplished.

I spent a lot of time alone during those years. I was pushing old friends away and actively avoiding making new ones. I desperately wanted companionship, but would get physically ill in situations that required me to show the kind of openness and vulnerability required to make connections. On multiple occasions, I would travel to campus or a bar for a social group meeting or a party an acquaintance was having and be unable to actually enter the room. My heart would race, my stomach would clench, my face would feel hot and red, I'd worry that I would stutter or be unable to speak at all, so I'd panic and spend an hour in an abandoned stairwell waiting for everybody to leave so they wouldn't be able to see that I'd tried to come and chickened out. I felt like there was something deeply wrong with me.

It took a lot of time and gradual exposure therapy before I was able to open up enough to ask out a pretty girl on a dating app and actually show up when she said yes. As I fell in love with her and she with me, my confidence grew and my social world expanded. I made some real friends who I trusted and felt comfortable expressing both positive and negative emotions with. It hasn't all been uninterrupted improvement. There have been blows to my ego that left me briefly feeling hopelessly unlovable and wretched. But a few years of solid support and love from friends and family have helped me build the foundation of self esteem I needed to actually like myself.

This dream felt like a succinct way for my brain to integrate and interpret these positive feelings of worth and self love. I think we all need some love from people around us to be able to get there. We need to be shown that we're neither divine nor damned. Being deeply, profoundly ok is plenty to ask for.