I’m not sure. But I know that I am. My first reaction is critical. It’s like a reflex. It’s so automatic there’s no time to look for a trigger or think about what causes it. It’s taken over my words and my actions before I know that it is present.
At work I look for the hole, I look to fill it with some overlooked item. I assume something has been missed and I look for it. It’s like an obsession.
When cooking a meal or cleaning in the kitchen: I see an order, a plan, I lay it out in my head. I execute it. If someone digresses, or causes me to digress, I get irritated. Irrationally irritated. It’s my compulsion, the laying out of the plan.
I’m hard on my husband. Lord knows I am hard on him. My first reaction is critical, always. Lately, I cringe because he is not the man of my dreams. I have known he is not the man of my dreams for years; since I married him. Yet here I am, criticizing him for not kissing me in just the right way, touching me in just the right way, fucking me in the way I’d like. But I don’t tell him the right way. I don’t explain it to him. (On the rare occasion I do, he doesn’t repeat. He’ll do it once and not stick with it). What is it I want him to do to me? That’s another post. Sorry.
I’m hard on my Baby Boy (not my baby, hardly a boy). He delivers something at work and I want more. He tells me something is completed and I look for the unfinished bug. But I don’t put into place more measurable practices, I just criticize and move on.
I’m hard on my mother. I’m not even starting that paragraph, chapter, volume, epic series.
I’m hard on my sister, and though I’m willing to change some of that, I never change the really hard stuff. I forgave her easily enough this last time. When she lit into me over dinner because I’m too distant from Mom. I asked her why everyone gets to take distance from her but me. Everyone else seems entitled to take breaks from her, not speak to her. But if I do it’s a problem. And to be honest I’m really weary of my sister trying to control me in family situations. Like leading us into the great mom’s house cleaning of 2011 (was that 2011?). Like telling me I’m too thin. Like telling me it’s not ok for me to save up for Mom’s “someday” instead of engaging with her. Like telling me to pressure Mom into not asking Grams for money, or not talk to Grams about this or that or the other thing. But back to the me being hard on those I love: I will never forgive my sister of these times because I can never forgive her for leaving. She says I have to forgive. Which makes me even more aware that she has no idea what happened to me or what became of that little girl she left behind.
I’m hard on my Dad. And he’s the easiest to make a final separation with. I don’t really know him. I can distance myself from his hurt and I can forget. Out of ear shot out of mind. So what if Costa Rica is off the list of my travel locations. I just don’t want to see him. My husband will have to go to Costa Rica without me.
I need to stick to my plans. I need to deliver my monologues as rehearsed. I can’t be derailed midstream. Once my thought train leaves the station, there’s no turning around. No two way radio communication.
So when another human interferes with my plans, I get critical. Because I’ve obviously given it the most thought. I’ve obviously built it up in my head in such detail that any digression cannot be managed.
I just wish he’d pull me under him in the morning and have his way with me. Don’t ask, don’t be plaintive. Don’t give me time to anticipate, don’t give me time to think through a plan. Just start feeling me up. Just take off my pajama bottoms, push up the shirt, bite my nipples, arrange my my body under yours, and fuck me. Oh the relief from all the demands.