A Take on Stepping Outside

My favorite piece of advice my mom gave me growing up, and something we still say to this day is, “don’t let the assholes get you down.” It was really funny when she first said it, as I was so young and I couldn’t believe she gave me advice with a swear in it. But as the years went on, I realized how true her statement was. People will treat you like God’s gift on Earth and stab you in the back in the same breath. That was a hard learning curve for me, I was so trusting back then. It actually makes me laugh to look back on. The tricky part of her advice I had to figure out was, the “assholes” of the world can include yourself, your thoughts, and your brain playing mean tricks on you. Take it all into consideration — even yourself.

You don’t think of yourself as an asshole, usually, or especially as an endearing quality in people. Losing friends, watching your family fall apart, you don’t think you specifically have anything to do with it. When do you finally realize that everyone and everything is fleeting might not be the fault of everyone else, but maybe you yourself? For me, I realized I was an asshole to myself when my mental health took a massive toll in high school. I’ll explain, but there’s a lot of back tracking to be done here.

We’ll start at the very beginning. I was diagnosed with a “mild” case of ADHD my sophomore year of high school. Along with that diagnosis, came GAD. If you’re familiar with that abbreviation, it probably pisses you off, too. It pisses me off now. GAD — generalized anxiety disorder. Having too much of a specific feeling, in this case, anxiety, gets you this bullshit blanket diagnosis. No remedies to help, no tips or tricks to get through my breakdowns, just a label on a piece of papers for doctors and anyone else who gets their grubby little hands on it to judge me.

I never really used to think I was an anxious person, I just thought a lot. My mind has always raced, and has always brought me back down to reality or shot me up into a dream land whenever I needed rescuing. I didn’t mind it, I was under the impression everyone thought the same as me — quick and frequent. I didn’t realize that your brain could have (potentially) only one thought at a time, I just assumed the norm was what I experience… ‘cause i’m so “normal,” right?

There’s way more where that came from in terms of my beginning of figuring out who I am that we’ll continue on later. But I do want to take a moment to recognize this. These stories always start the same shit way: “When I was in high school… X trauma happened causing Y.” I know, I hate it, too. The reality? That’s the truth. Everyone goes through something that is their version of the worst thing ever. I like using the following analogy, and sorry it’s kind of disturbing. But…hear me out. My pile of shit is mine to bear. It’s a huge pile. Like, too much of a pile. Meanwhile, this person over here also has a pile of shit. Their shit that they bear. It is not even half the size of mine, so why can’t this other person see how much shit I have to deal with instead of them?

Let’s take a step back and reconnect with what we just witnessed. Whether your “pile of shit,” your load that burdens you is the size of a pebble or a boulder, it is yours to carry. We all have a different “turning point,” and trying to out-do each other with who had the shittiest thing happen to them wins, just makes everyone lose. I’m realizing that more recently, myself. If we weigh your worst experience with my worst experience, they will weigh the same: they are our individual worst, and that should be enough. So now, when I share my worst experience and someone has the energy to share theirs with me, it’s important for me to take a step outside of myself when my story is finished. Learning that people are more like us than not is the start of finding the blissful death of the ego. I was the asshole for not doing that and instead finding ways to compare our situations. Stepping outside of yourself is difficult and uncomfortable. However, the way I look at it, so is being anxious and filled with flooding thoughts and being scared of the way your brain works. So is going somewhere new for the first time and not knowing which way is up. So is going back to school after three years of dead end jobs and trying to redeem yourself for your future. So is… I guess you get what I’m saying. Life is uncomfortable. Will Smith said that life is what is on the other side of fear. Life is scary, but life is also what is going on around you constantly. Sitting in that can make you want to avoid it, but if you do, just know you’ll never get those moments back, unfortunately not even Elon Musk has been able to create a rewind button for reality. Don’t be an asshole to yourself by missing those moments. Don’t let the assholes get you down.