“But what would have been the good?”
Aslan said nothing.
“You mean,” said Lucy rather faintly, “that it would have turned out all right – somehow? But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?”
“To know what would have happened, child?” said Aslan. “No. Nobody is ever told that.”
“Oh dear,” said Lucy.
“But anyone can find out what will happen,” said Aslan.
~ C.S. Lewis, “Prince Caspian”
Hindsight is Terrifying
I have been walking in a fog most of my life. A few years ago, it began to dissipate, and I was able to see ahead of me a little better. Now, more of the fog has cleared, and I am able to look back with more clarity. Often I am horrified by what I see.
I’m realizing a lot of things about myself, primarily that I’m not as…anything…as I thought I was: gifted, clever, talented, funny, interesting, pleasant, kind, deserving. At the same time, I have been a lot more of other things than I thought I was: bitter, awkward, callous, angry, self-absorbed, entitled. Sometimes I look back on my past behavior or words and cringe and wonder if I should find every person I’ve ever known and apologize to them.
Self-awareness is a blessing and a curse.
A couple months ago, one of our pastors pointed out that I have changed (for the better) in the years he’s known me. He said I’ve lost a hard, sharp edge I used to have. He chalked it up to getting married, which I know did help, but I also knew it had started earlier, before I even met my husband.
I agreed with him—but it was horrifying to hear someone else call it out. It shook me. People saw the difference.
Which meant they knew what I had been before. I felt vulnerable, and I hated it.
But it also shook me because only I knew what was the real catalyst for this change.
This fog first began to clear a few years ago, when I broke off a relationship that had become too hurtful and unstable to manage. Unfortunately, it was a blood relationship. It was a difficult and painful decision that I don’t regret.
But stepping away from the source of fog wasn’t like just getting a breath of fresh air and seeing further. It went deeper than that. I had to learn how to exist all over again.
I was in my early 30s, and I had to re-learn almost everything I knew about life and what was normal and acceptable: how to treat people, how to let them treat me, how to behave, what was kind and what was cruel, what was appropriate or healthy or reasonable or true or false, what I even wanted in my life.
I didn’t learn all this at once, or all from the same source. It’s taken prayer, therapy, reading, introspection, confessions, and new relationships.
My Own Split Personality
One of the most recent things I’ve become aware of is what caused my distorted self-image. I have a deeply narcissistic streak where I think I am—and deserve—much more than is reasonable. At the same time, I have a crippling tendency toward self-loathing. I was splitting myself.
“Splitting” is an unhealthy coping mechanism for difficult emotions. It involves a black-and-white attitude toward someone or something. With splitting, a person cannot hold nuanced or opposing viewpoints: it’s all or nothing. They can’t see the pros of an argument they disagree with, and they can’t acknowledge that a person they like may have done something bad.
If a parent who engages in splitting has two children, he or she may see one child as “all good” and the other as “all bad.” But if there’s only one child, that child may be “all good” or “all bad” depending on the day…or hour.
That happened to me, and it influenced how I saw myself. I was the smartest, prettiest, most talented person in the room/class. I had to be the best, deserve the best, come first at everything. And the black-and-white, all-or-nothing, zero-sum thinking meant that if I was anything less than 100% at anything, then I was the worst. So I didn’t want to try something if I wasn’t going to be the very best—and there’s a lot in my life I didn’t try.
Then there were days when I was the laziest, most selfish, hateful, ungrateful brat. Nothing I could do was right or good. So I was anxious and fearful, certain that I would fail at whatever I tried, that everyone hated me, that I was ugly inside and out.
More clearly than ever I realize this is a huge part of why I liked a lot of story villains. Yeah, I felt like a rejected, unappreciated, misunderstood outsider. But villains also reflected the evil I knew I was capable of, or what was already inside me. I related to them, not the heroes who were good-looking and did the right thing.
Finding the Me In-Between
Like most things in life, I suppose the truth is somewhere in-between. A terrible sinner made in God’s image. So I’ve been trying to find that person in the in-between.
At the same time, I’m mourning the person I could or should have been, without all the distortion and dysfunction. I will never know who that person is—as Aslan says in Prince Caspian, no one is ever told what would have happened.
But I’m going to find out what will happen. Hopefully that includes becoming a kinder, more patient, sympathetic, generous, braver, humble-yet-rightly-confident person. Someone I can look back on without cringing.
It seems overwhelming sometimes. But I have to remember that, at the heart of it, it’s God working in me, not myself. I don’t know why—only He knows the purpose right now. But if I really believe in Christ’s redemption, I have to keep believing that God will bring good out of what I’ve experienced.
Lucy buried her head in his mane to hide from his face, But there must have been magic in his mane. She could feel lion-strength going into her. Quite suddenly she sat up.
“I’m sorry, Aslan,” she said. “I’m ready now.”
“Now you are a lioness,” said Aslan.
The Badass Introvert 