bad perfectionists = con-fusion

I've been bad. "Bad, bad, Leroy Brown. Baddest man in the whole damn town." Bad about doing homework, yet good about spending time with people and... relaxing. I'm currently ignoring the Emily Dickinson essay that's been looming over me for the past few days in order to write about confusion.

I started reading a book that my father gave me on relating with and loving people according to how God intended us to relate with each other. That is to say, I need to learn how to relate with people better: a statement I find almost humorous to say outloud--or online, for that matter--but a genuine one. I've been learning that learning how to love others right starts--in some ways--with learning how to love myself better and with realizing that everyone has to make their own choices on whether to love or not... that I can choose for myself and can change only myself.

But that has only a little bit to do with confusion.

The book explained confusion as what happens when two things are fused together. The antidote to confusion, being separate, helps explain this a little. But, even more helpful was what the book said about people who are perfectionists who are confused:

Perfectionists will often stay confused and avoid choosing one opinion about something because they are afraid that their opinion will make someone mad (paraphrased).

Man, do I identify with this. I think... to tie this in with poetry now... that I've even included a whole swell of confusion in my poetry and have posed question after question after question in poems without any clear answers because I have been afraid of having an opinion that will stir up people of opposite opinions (also because I literally am fused to more than one opinion). Damn. What to do about that?

I do admit that it's a problem; and, I think, there is value to having one opinion. I need to understand that I'm okay--I am still loved and worth loving--even when my opinion does not coincide or sit well with everyone that I relate with. ... la, la, la. This is where I'm going to have to stay for a little while -- learning how to value and separate my thoughts from others and learning how to let myself be someone who is worth having an opinion.