Be Yourself — Dec. 1, 2022

John Agliata

10 months ago

advice lettering text on black background

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
A Good Self 👋
Urgent Care, Revisited 👩‍⚕️
Slow Down 🐢

I remember this time back in sixth grade when a trusted adult was talking to me as I struggled through what turned out to be a pretty life-defining traumatic experience. The friends I’d grown up with since I was a small boy had decided, en masse, that I was not good enough to hang out with. Suddenly, I was in a new school — our middle school combined four elementary schools from different communities — with absolutely no friends and more than just a few people who were engaged in what even then would have been called bullying.

“Just be yourself,” this trusted adult said, encouraging me to “get out there” and meet new friends.

I remember wanting to punch him in the face.

Didn’t he understand? That was at the core of the fucking problem! Who exactly was I? I’d never really known. I knew that I could adapt who I was to just about any different setting. I am extremely gifted in that area, I’ve come to realize as an adult.

I also knew that, when not with anyone else, I didn’t have a clue who I really was.

I knew who I was supposed to be. Those norms had been instilled in me by well-meaning parents and my suburban New York upbringing. But did I feel like being the person defined by those things? Absolutely not.

You know who I was back then? I was a scared-as-shit, lonely, angry, confused pre-teen who had absolutely no clue why he didn’t seem to fit into this world in any meaningful way. I’m quite sure that what this trusted adult was saying wasn’t that I should go be that person.

But if the me I was supposed to be being was someone different, well, no shit, yeah, I’d want to be that person. Would you happen to have the Dewey Decimal System number in the library to go find that book so I can study up and make it happen?

I tried so many different things to “be me.” I looked back to a time when “me” seemed “good enough,” and I pegged the change to third grade, when I got glasses. Apparently, seeing through external semi-artificial means was a grievous sin in my school, so after being made fun of one too many times for wearing glasses, I put my foot down and said I wasn’t going back to school if I didn’t get contacts.

I got contacts. It changed nothing.

I tried changing how I dressed. I tried smiling more. Smiling less. Talking more. Talking less. Approaching random groups. Being generous with surplus snacks. Selling Blow Pops for a quarter (word to the wise: Don’t ever start getting high on your own supply).

No matter what, “being me” always seemed to be a step behind or out of line with everyone else who seemed to have comparably less problem being them.

I fully recognize that all these changes weren’t me being authentically me, but again, at that time (and, to a large extent today), I had no clue who the hell the authentic me actually was.

Being told to be me led me down some pretty dark paths as I grew through my teen years. Being me sometimes meant I was a sullen, angry, argumentative, standoffish prick. Being me led to overwhelming, uncontrollable, often unseen sadness and pain that nearly drowned me.

That was me being me, but not the me I wanted me being … not the me that anyone wanted me being.

It has been more than three decades since that trusted adult told me to just be myself, and I think his advice no less stupid and unhelpful than I did back then.

I was thinking about that today, thinking that the person who gave me that advice is probably dead, wondering how many other people to whom he passed on that little pearl of wisdom. I know he meant well. I know he thought what he was saying was wise and helpful. I also know that he missed the point.

What would I say to sixth-grade me? Could I do any better job in counseling that kid, to help pave a less difficult, painful, scarring path for him to get to where I am today?

Yes. Yes I can.

“John, make yours a good self.”

I realized about a half decade ago that the cure for me when I’m feeling down or anxious or angry is to focus on doing for others, on being a light, on not just being me but being a better version of me.

This doesn’t mean I have any resentment to the me I am before I start focusing on being a better me. It just means that we all can do more. Every fucking day, we have opportunities to do something different to be a better self. That doesn’t mean we have to. It just means the option is open.

It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t not have to be big. It could be a random act of kindness for a stranger. It could be flowers for my wife. It could be leaving an anonymous gift for a co-worker on his desk. It could be sitting and talking with a homeless person and giving him a bag of supplies before a cold night. It could be buying myself a coffee and sitting outside in the cold and alternately sipping the hot drink and watching the fog from my breath in the cool air.

Whatever it is, if I go back to doing that thing that helps me be a good self, I seem to find peace. Do I fit in any better? Maybe. Maybe not. It just doesn’t seem to matter as much when I’m making me a good self.

So please … fuck all this talk about just being yourself. That is so often unhelpful. Just make yours a good self.

just be yourself

I found myself back in urgent care this morning. It was a different urgent care from the one I visited Saturday morning, the one in which I was diagnosed with a double ear infection, given a steroid shot in the arm and handed two prescriptions — one for an antibiotic and one for steroid pills that have made me jumpy as a meth-head.

If anything, the stuffiness in my left ear is worse. The ringing in that ear is worse. My head overall is more stuffy. I’m tired, cranky and hate talking because it echoes in my brain.

If I wanted to see my primary care physician, I might be able to get in around January. Of 2088.

I worry about a nation that is pushing its ill to understaffed clinics with the most qualified person being a nurse practitioner. I have nothing against nurse practitioners. The have more medical training than I do. But they’re not doctors. Which isn’t to say I have tremendous faith in them either. Not after 2021 and my adventure with traditional medicine and Longhaul COVID.

This nurse practitioner today did the same thing the nurse practitioner did on Saturday She looked in me ears. She told me I have lots of fluid on my left ear and that my eardrum is really red. She told me my right ear has fluid but is less red. She peeked down my throat. She listened to my lungs, which seems to be the doctor-visit equivalent of being handed a tiny snack back on an airplane.

In the end, she called in a prescription for a different antibiotic and for ear drops. She said if I didn’t start feeling better by Monday, to call … and this is where I thought she was going to say “a real doctor” … my primary care physician or an ENT. I’m sure she’s well aware of the challenge of getting into either, even with ears stuffed for more than two weeks, before I either go insane from all this stuffiness or suffer permanent hearing loss.

Positive note: I’m getting really good at saying the word, “What?”

ear infection

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