Rose Coloured Glasses

We all look at things through filters. We all have different filters. We get our filters from our past experience, from our expectations, from those around us, from society. Very often we have no idea what those filters are until they come to our attention, but that doesn’t usually happen until we have already made a judgement based on the original filters.

We are in the middle of a pandemic. Everything is different, and everything is now filtered through an additional set of pandemic filters.

Is that person following the local/national laws & guidelines?
Is that person behaving safely?
Is that person behaving less or more safely than I am?

Just before the last one is where the filter kicks in and we are no longer pretending to analyse facts but instead are freely casting judgement.

A friend recently told me that they were going to go to “have a few beers and play board games with friends”.

Visiting friends, in their own home was within the local and national guidelines.
My friend is over 18 therefore is old enough to drink beer.
Board games are a standard adult activity.
My friend had already mentioned their hand washing and use of hand sanitiser,

That meant that according to their report they were following local & national laws and guidelines and behaving safely.

Cue the filter!

With a pandemic filter firmly in place “beers, board games & friends” = “house party” = “super spreader event”

Then I freewheeled into judgement. My friend was behaving less safely than I was. They were going to a house party and I decided not to comment because it’s a pandemic and I was busy filing them under “let’s not keep company until there is a vaccine” because I am safe, and they are not.

I didn’t stop to ask. I didn’t ask for more information. I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t inquire after names, or a location, or the intended games.

I judged, and then I based everything after that on that judgement.

I have done this with The Boy. I haven’t done it very much in the last few years, but I have done it. I have judged him based on ideas I already had.

If I had stopped and asked my friend those questions I would have discovered that they were having a Chinese take away with a 2 adult + 2 child family and would be playing UNO.

So instead of a house party, my friend went to a family gathering and I had to dig myself out of the judgemental hole I had planted myself in.

How Will They Know?

Do I want my children to grow up to be like me?
Do I want them to grow up to question their choices and boundaries for the sake of someone else?

How will my children know how to live their best lives when they grow up if I don’t show them me living my best life?

I have always been called too much. They weren’t always the words used but the message remained the same… Be less, I don’t like this much. 

I talked too much
I was taller than everyone else
I loved too much
I cared too much
I thought too much
I knew too much

So I started to live the idea that I was too much

I held myself to higher standards than other people
I dialed myself down
I tried to make myself small
I was a worse critic of myself than anyone could be, plus I got in there first

I tried to be normal. I tried to fit in. It never worked and I didn’t know why. People just vanished out of my life. I had no idea why people liked me or stopped liking me. I lived a life confused by the messages from without and within that seemed to be constantly in conflict. 

I decided to stop being too much. Sideline the desires I had, not express my preferences. So I did that and it didn’t work. 

I decided part of recovering from The Time That Went Before would be to stop trying to be normal. 

When I got into my last relationship I thought “I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do” and I dug my heels in. I am going to show my children that healthy boundaries are not only possible in a relationship, but are good for the relationship. Unfortunately I did that with someone who reacted really poorly to other people having boundaries and had none themself so yet again I was too much. 

No boundaries = too much
Healthy boundaries = too much

How was I supposed to win? When would the world stop thinking I am too much? 

As I sit here today I realise that it doesn’t matter what the world thinks about how much I am. I can only be myself. I am this much. I am the goldilocks amount of much. I am M Class. 

I love well. I love from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I love  in ways that don’t use the standard words. I love with the volume dialed way up. 

Some people may know all the ways to see, hear, feel that love without needing me to be something different so that they can love me too. Other people may not and that is about their skills and abilities, and nothing to do with my lack of ability to be “normal”. 

Part of this job of parenting is to show my children that they are M Class. They are the goldilocks amount of much, however much that much is.

I can only show them what M Class looks like by being M Class myself.