EXPECTATIONS: OURS OR THOSE OF THE OTHERS

17.05.04

Regarding my last confessions about narcissistic behaviour and unwillingness to admit our mediocre or bad performance even in tasks that we love, I would also like to refer to how much I believe that someone’s disability can lead to such narcissistic behavioural patterns. Although it would make no sense explaining and analyzing everything within the scope of the problem (of mobility or of other sort) that we might be facing, I personally believe that this determines in many cases our need and persistence to be perfect in everything that we do or never to lose, a thing which is impossible anyway.

For instance, throughout all the years that I was a university student, I allowed myself to take a September examination (an examination which does not take place in the two regular seasons, namely January and June) only once. I did this exactly because I wanted to stop being so typical in everything. Without coming to understand this, I was setting myself apart from the others, under the pretext that I would thus manage to prove to some of them that, if they had time to waste, I could be smarter, outdoing them in ‘stunts’ that they would not bear performing. Of course, this did not necessarily mean that I was a better student. Eventually, I never went after grades. Some times, I had my ‘perks’. Nonetheless, I never left myself to my fate. This is why it was unthinkable for me to sit the Proficiency certificate exam or the C.E.L.I. exam for a second time and I really suffered even at the idea of a possible failure. That’s how I gave my sister every right to call me a ‘nerd’ and, what’s the worst of it, I made my parents think that I am great and unusually intelligent, resulting in my feeling even more frightened of the possible failure, which could make all my parents’ ideal images of me fall apart and thus put a noose around my own neck. And I ask you: would I be such a perfectionist and a responsible person if I did not have this specific disability, which I some times try to rip out of myself or ignore it? I personally believe that I would not. Of course, the parents are also to blame for thinking of you as a role model. They can make you feel that you have undertaken obligations that appertain to a Messiah or to God. But I am the one who has the biggest responsibility, since I keep preserving in my own way this ideal model that most people try to build for me. There is no point in trying to cover a momentary lapse of reason (yes. This is how simply a disability is born.) just by being successful for the rest of my life. This is the only reason why I have recently decided not to take myself so seriously. Consequently, if you think that you have no reason to take my words under consideration, maybe you know something that I don’t.