Dear Character Defect

I need to let you go now.

Because you interfere with my ability to experience the joy of doing something for the simple love of doing it.  Because you have me spending too much of the limited time I have in this head focusing on who or what is better or worse instead of what is.  Because you rob me of celebrating my successes and those of other people.  Because you are an aging artifact of the behavior of insecure, immature people who could not make good decisions but were in charge of my formation.

You are a portrait painted by hurt people, no less a construct than the fairy tales I was nursed on and rejected.  Believing in you perpetuates the hurt and fear of your creators; keeps that hurt and fear spinning out into the world.

This doesn’t mean I give up my right to practice discernment.  I intend to use brain and eyes to the best of my ability.  I intend to be right sized.

I have people now who hold me in their strong hands – neither blind to my faults and humanity, nor disgusted by them; neither dazzled by my gifts and talents, nor jealous, fearful, and dismissive of them.

I can breathe.  I can stretch.  I can fall.  I can get up.  I can smile at the mirror and at the rest of this raggedy family.