I put myself down too much. And I need to stop.
I’ve been going through a transition in my life, and it’s scary. I’m leaving a comfortable job and taking my first terrifying steps into the unknown. As a result, with this brain of mine, my anxiety and depression both have kicked into high gear.
Yesterday, I felt particularly anxious, and talked about it with a friend — about how I keep telling myself this is the right move for me, but every once in a while, I experience a day when the pit never leaves my stomach, and my brain won’t stop screaming, “Who do you think you are?”
At the end of a long and vulnerable text message, almost-reflexively, I found myself adding, “Sorry I’m such a mess.” But I stopped, and I deleted it. Because —seriously — what the hell was that?
Here was a friend, explicitly telling me she wanted to listen — telling me to tell her what I was really feeling. And here I was, a few months after posting a long, vulnerable, public resolution not to sugarcoat my mental health anymore. Yet, in my mind, telling my friend the truth about my feelings was an imposition, was so shameful that it warranted an apology. I had to break the tension.
So my instinct was to put myself down.
“Mess” is my go to self-putdown, which — like all of the best insults — is based in a certain amount of truth. As a rule, I’m not the most organized person, and my time management skills could improve. I’ve lived with ADHD my whole life (only diagnosed and treated in my 20s). My bedroom always was and is. . . untidy. Every time I’ve ever opened any locker in any school I was attending, reams-worth of paper and coats and gloves and text books would fall out. My car currently hosts masses of campaign literature, old mail, newspapers, pots and pans, fast food bags, cat litter, and empty Red Bull cans.
But — still. Ever since last night, I’ve been thinking hard about the word I so often use to describe myself.
“Mess” isn’t a neutral term , but an unambiguously negative one. A mess isn’t just untidy, but something more. It necessarily includes a value judgment that the untidy thing is bad because of its untidiness. “Your room is a mess” doesn’t just mean “You left your socks on the floor.” It means, “You left your socks on the floor, and, in so doing, made this room a worse place.” People don’t matter-of-factly observe that you “left a mess” in the microwave — saying it implies they want you to clean it up. And when you “mess something up,” that something was better before you did whatever you did to change it.
A “mess” smells bad, looks bad, spreads germs, makes errors, invades people’s space, and downgrades the value of its contents and surroundings.
When I refer to myself as a mess, I’m not just apologizing for an inconvenience. It’s an expression of the belief that my untidiness — physical, mental, social — is bad, and imposes upon those around me. It’s corroboration for that voice in my head that tells me, because my life is unorganized, I’m not as good as other people.
In her Netflix special, Nanette, Hannah Gadsby analyzes and rejects comedy tropes, including those upon which she’s relied her entire career. One of the first to draw her ire is self-deprecation. Once a fertile source of set-ups and punchlines, Gadsby tells us why she refuses to put herself down in exchange for any more laughs:
Do you understand what self-deprecation means when it comes from somebody who already exists in the margins? It’s not humility, it’s humiliation. I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak, and I simply will not do that anymore, not to myself or anybody who identifies with me.
That quote — that entire special, really, but especially that quote — hit me right between the eyes. Because, like Gadsby, I use self-deprecation to break tension. I call myself “a mess” (often followed by “lol”) because I’ve said something heavy, or admitted a mistake, or made myself vulnerable. When I put myself down, the real message is, “I’m not as good as you, and I’m sorry you had to hear me speak.” It’s a means to obtain permission to exist among people I believe — despite years telling myself otherwise — are better than me. Because my untidiness is a fundamental flaw that decreases the value of my surroundings.
That’s not humility — it’s humiliation. And it’s bullshit.
