ok actually I'm exhausted so NAP first and then spooky feelings ok goodnight for now
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ALT
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Conversation
ok I had a nap and some food and now I’m ready to get into some feels
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I think there are some obvious threads from childhood that I like mentally gesture at in these discussions with myself but never really examine closely and it’s probably worth picking one and giving it some higher quality attention
let’s go with parental love and praise
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I know that as a child I got praise for being smart earlier than I even remember. Not just being smart, but being a straight A student was my defining trait in my family, even my cousins knew me as “the genius” which is just laughable but eh that was my life.
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I know my parents meant well ofc but grades were the condition of everything and so it was very easy to feel like their love was basically also conditional on them too. They liked that side of me at home too, they treated me better when I was hyper-articulate and reasonable etc
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so there were these unfortunate shifts in the stakes wrt schoolwork
📈 +++ heard that academic success was explicitly necessary for success in life & implicitly necessary for belonging
📉 - - - got any msg what was imposed on me @ school was for my best interests or well-being
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it was motivating to earn love but demotivating that it had to be earned
& it was just demotivating to learn whole education system was flawed
so overall there was less meaning in my schoolwork & less motivation to do it over time but it was still tightly assoc w love/belonging
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I can’t do much about the education system being misguided but
I could potentially untangle my schoolwork from love and belonging and, although I wouldn’t have that source of motivation anymore, I wouldn’t have the demotivating part either.
Less demotivating sounds nice.
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I don’t feel smart in these circles but I often feel very loved & accepted.
My family at this point pities me for being such a neurotic lil nerd much more often than they praise me for dragging myself through my courses.
My bf will think I’m a sexy genius no matter what lol 😂
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it does feel nice to sit for a moment and reflect on the fact that if I miss a deadline or fail a course or don’t finish law school no one will actually stop loving me (unless I do, but I shouldn’t! if I do I’m a big dork 🤡)
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