For me, the worst part about being around people who bring you down is that after a while you actually start to believe the things they say about you. True or not, the limitations they ascribe ultimately become yours. Invisible boundaries which you accept and make your own.
And you start to think that maybe these walls were inherent; that they were always there but you just never noticed till now.
Now that they've been pointed out to you repeatedly, they suddenly become some sort of insurmountable barrier you're forced to acknowledge. Perhaps reluctantly at first, even with some resistance. But eventually you'll get used to people alerting you to it. You won't even need confirmation of its existence anymore. In fact you'll start voluntarily pointing it out to people fossilizing it further because now the imaginary wall has the endorsement of its owner.
And you won't fight that good ol' wall anymore - you'll smile, throw your hands up behind your head and lean back against it. You'll accept it as a fact of life. Some unchangeable aspect about you. No longer a liability, it becomes a crutch. An expedient excuse you can always fall back on without fail; for your complacency, your failures, your cowardice.
And maybe you'll never dare breach that wall.
It's so much easier not to anyway because such boundaries conveniently circumscribe what you can and cannot do. They define and neatly encase your person. They keep you out of potentially difficult, unfamiliar situations whilst letting you remain in your own little comfortable space. And you'll never know how easily those walls could succumb and crumble if you should so choose to chip away at them slowly and bravely. Of course you never did.
At a young age someone defined how far I could go and what I could not do. At a young age someone discouraged me from going any further reassuring me that I was perfectly fine remaining where I was because all people have their 'strengths' and 'weaknesses'. Some are 'naturally' (that word is extremely dangerous because it justifies things as needing no further justification) more talented in certain things than other. After much affirmation from that someone, I believed what s/he said. From then on I didn't even try. I gave up on those projects which I had no possible chance of doing well in abetted by that same person.
(Till today I still dismiss them almost instinctively)
I came up with totalizing, permanent labels for myself like 'mediocre' or 'poor' in those areas I was not too good at. Whether a temporal setback or not, every less-than-perfect incident/result simply served to seal my already incipient reputation as a 'natural' born-failure in ____. (yes that word is dangerous)
At some points these things - these little black spots - disappeared completely. Perhaps they were deemed irrelevant to my life or I simply stopped thinking about them as much as before. Or most likely I just got used to dismissing them that they simply became an unthinkable option. I could just focus on whatever it was I was considered 'good' at from now on.
Then one day I decided to try my hand at one of those areas I thought I had absolutely no inclination toward.
And to my horror I realized I was good.
And I realized I could have been even better if I'd followed through with it ages ago. Days, months, years ago. I thought of all the different permutations my life could have
conformed to had I actually carried on with it.
I then began to feel very cheated and resentful toward whoever it was that had repeatedly convinced me about my inability to succeed.
But then I realized it was my own fault as well. To blame him/her alone would be yet another way to avoid admitting my complicity. It would be a means to absolve and distance myself from my own disappointing track record. Another wall to lean upon.
Because truly I had a vested interest in believing every one of those things s/he had said about me. Shortcomings in a person are never completely negative but are loopholes to be exploited to great effect.
Regardless, it was a sobering moment when I realized that perhaps I was different from the person I had always confidently described to my friends/people around me. Perhaps I had never really known Jeanne all too well. Perhaps my entire life will be one of constant and unceasing 'self-discovery.' Of knocking down more myths and half-truths about myself and 'charting new limits.' I'm sorry about using such corporate sounding cliches. But then again, cliches are cliches only when they are hollow and uttered without much sincerity. When they actually start to make sense - years after you first rolled your eyes at them - there can perhaps be no better expression which springs to mind first. And 'self-discovery' is one platitude I never really got till years later.
But returning to the subject at hand, there is something I'll never quite know which is the most troubling of all. All I am sure of is my perpetual ignorance; that at the back of my mind I will always wonder irresistably about the person I might have been if I had tried a little harder once upon a time. If I had been a little more brave. If I had not listened so much. If I had suspended my (unquestioning) belief.
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