Smalls tasks. One thing. Little pieces. Eventual mountains.

The thing about “eventual mountains” is that we actually have to have the presence of mind to turn around and acknowledge we’ve reached the top of a mountain. Otherwise, small tasks never seem to add up to anything significant, because we’re always striving without appreciating our own efforts.

I’ve noticed this week that my patience with people I come into daily contact with is … thin. That I envelop the small irks with a candy-coating of relish. (Not like real relish, that’d be gross.) From the first work email I replied to yesterday morning, back from the long weekend, to the impatience I had toward someone else, I knew that I was taking on more emotional attachment to these interactions than I truly had to.

None of this was personal. "I didn’t cause, can’t control and can’t cure" you or your behavior. It is not my fault or responsibility that you, woman, are a tight-ass, type-A, micro-managing, self-righteous, impervious, judgmental bitch.

IN THIS inner maelstrom of judgment toward others, I remembered something significant: We are only a percent as judgmental of others as we are toward ourselves. It’s something I’ve heard again and again. If you hear someone being judgmental of others, just know that they treat themselves with a spiked lash of self-derision infinitely more rigid than they use on others.

And so, I’m brought back to myself. Where the only chance for change, love, release, is ever possible.

If I’m so mean to others, so angry, and rigid, and correcting, and impatient and punitive toward them… how on earth am I to myself?

And, I’m reminded of something else: Every single person who’s ever told me that I’m too hard on myself.

I never actually take this in. I brush this comment aside like so much hippie, free-love nonsense. I don’t treat myself harshly. I’m fine to myself. Fuck you.

But. I’ve begun to see the veracity of this opinion. That it’s not actually opinion, when I really listen to the thoughts I fling at myself. I am very exacting and punitive toward myself, though I’m very good enough to hide it, or to brush it under the rug.

I’m coming to see that I have internalized a pattern of self-deflation. Having experienced enough external feedback in response to being authentic, I’ve become habitualized to doing it to myself. Better not to show who you really are, what you really want to do, what talent you really have, because it will be taken away from you. Trouble is, I’m the one doing the taking these days.

Better to stop myself early from doing anything worth doing, because I “know” I’ll just fuck it up, it will be taken away, it will be flawed eventually.

It’s the reason I continue to hold on to second-rate things (and ideas, and jobs): No use in having something really nice, because you, Molly, will fuck it up anyway. OR, it will be taken from you, and you will be heart-broken. Better to have or do something only half-assed, because then you won’t be disappointed.

Nor will I actually be fulfilled.

And, by the way, did you happen to catch all that self-derisive talk up there? It’s not actually that explicit when it’s happening. Instead it’s a mercurial thread of poison in my water supply.

A friend told me last night that I haven’t caught a break in a while. That no wonder I’m tired and frustrated and feverish with the “Divine unrest.” The Universe owes me a break.

But as we spoke about self-flagellation, I replied to her, I haven’t given myself a break in a while. To which she replied, Well, you are the Universe.

Tis pity, tis true.

I believe we, in some ways, create our own reality. And if there is a constant badgering of myself, a constant deflation, and a “cosmic” interception of my touchdown passes, born of an (old) idea that I can’t have nice things, do good things, have success, and ease and partnership and fulfillment and joy … then of course that’s what will be reflected back to me.

Last night, I re-posted a 2012 blog of “What ifs” in the style of Shel Silverstein. As I read it, I began to rephrase the questions in terms of affirmations. Instead of “What if I believed I were safe,” I read to myself, “I am safe.” “What if I allowed myself to laugh,” becomes, “I allow myself to laugh.”

I see that how I am behaving toward others is a reflection of how I behave toward myself. And that awareness is one of those tiny steps I need to be conscious -- and appreciative -- of as I climb this mountain toward health.