Having a Self Is Not Selfish

A Quest. Or... Lessons from being poor, young and stupid.

This is a Quest. The essay and journal prompt is free. The Questbook (a solution in pen and paper format) is for paid subscribers.

When I was in my early twenties, I had one of “those” boyfriends. Let’s call him Roger. You know the type: possessive, controlling, jealous. Oh, but he was a charmer. He said all the right things at all the right times and gave me that dimpled grin from beneath his mop of curly black hair that made my insides go all gooey, so I gave in to his demands and ignored his failings.

I was the one who schlepped the grocery bags (the weight of the plastic digging red blood blisters into my wrists) from the dirty supermarket down the block, and cooked all the ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese dinners (with an occasional chicken breast bought on a credit card - yes I was that young, that poor and that stupid), because he was just about to win Street Fighter II in partnership with his buddy (let’s call him Graham) who had just spent the last week sleeping on our living room floor because he was “between apartments.” Plus, Roger was probably too stoned because he’d been smoking weed a lot since he’d been fired from his fifth job in as many weeks, and he was stressed out.

I think I’ve gotten off track here. Perhaps I have some deeply repressed feelings.

This is Cleo. Thirty years of yes, and the one time she said no, someone called her selfish, so she never risked it again. The question that finally clears the fog isn't "am I allowed to want this?" It's quieter, and it works: chosen, or compelled?

The reason I bring up said boyfriend is because after four years of supporting him and his buddies while secretly skimming the tops off my paycheck and hiding cash in a plastic bag in the pocket of an old jacket hanging in my closet, I decided to break up with him. And he said a word to me that I took to heart.

He told me I was selfish.

We were on the phone. I had taken a job upstate with a theatre company, and he had tagged along because, guess what, he didn’t have a job to hold him in the city. He got a telemarketing job and lasted less than a week before getting fired (who knows what for). Then he started hanging out at our new apartment and telling me I needed to stay home with him because he was lonely while I was trying to make new friends amongst the company I was about to work with for a year. I told him I couldn’t do it anymore, and he should go back to the city. He moved out, called me the next day, and told me I was selfish.

As I have written in past posts, Gen X girls didn’t want to be selfish. We wanted to be one of the boys, an easy girlfriend, low drama.

In other words, we weren’t supposed to actually want anything.

Now that the word “selfish” had been thrown at me once, I was terrified of hearing it again. So I adjusted. For the rest of my life.

So here we are, in midlife, realizing we’ve spent so long not wanting anything that wasn’t culturally, relationally, or familiarly approved that we’ve forgotten not just what we want, but how to want in the first place.

And here’s the cruel part: even when our estrogen levels drop into the “all out of f**ks to give” realm, and we finally hand ourselves permission to want again, permission isn’t enough. That word, selfish, did its work. One tiny desire, said out loud, still feels like one too many. We’ve given for so long that we forgot we have a self at all. And that having one was never the crime we were told it was.

I am allowed to want to leave a party if I’m tired. I am allowed to spend money on a personal trainer to improve my health. I am allowed to say no to a request if it stresses me out. I am allowed to only give my time to the people who make my life happier, and remove the people who don’t. I am allowed to lie in bed for two days and binge The Four Seasons on Netflix if I feel like it and I have the time.

You know this to be true, and so now you’ve given yourself permission to curate yourself into the person you should always have been before you gave so much of yourself away. But here’s the problem... permission alone never sticks, because no matter how many times you tell yourself that wanting something is not selfish, it still feels like it. And someone is always right there, asking that you keep on giving at the expense of your own wants.

So here’s what I’ve done lately, and maybe it will help you. I’ve created a distinction between chosen giving vs. compelled giving. It’s the same act, with an opposite root. One version might cost you a relationship or two (people don’t like it when you stop being so easy), but the other version will cost you a self.

Your boss: “Would you just take a look at this presentation over the weekend and maybe clean it up for me?”

Your friend: “I can’t go to that wedding this weekend unless you watch the kids for me. But I know it’s your anniversary.”

Your husband: “I know you don’t love golf, but I really would love to spend the day on the green with you today.”

There’s only one of these on this list that would be a chosen giving vs. a compelled giving for me. Maybe your choice is not mine; maybe you would choose more than one. That’s okay. We’re all different, but the heroine’s journey elements are the same.

There’s one enemy in this, and it’s a single inherited word: selfish. It’s the thing that turned me into a support unit running at 100%, no off switch, for the better part of my life. And there’s exactly one weapon that works against it. It’s not permission or another pep talk, but that little question: chosen or compelled? Ask it every time someone reaches for your time, and watch how fast the fog clears.

That question got me one more thing. My elixirs. Two mantras. One I repeat to myself when, against all the evidence, my interior mean girl is still insisting I’m selfish. And one I whip out for other people when I need to stand my ground. They’re the thing I carried home from all of this, and I’ll hand them to you, but here’s the catch: yours won’t be mine. You can’t borrow these. You have to go find the exact phrases that let you build a real self, slowly and carefully, out from under everyone else’s needs, the you that isn’t some messy-middle Frankenstein stitched together from what other people wanted.

You’ll find the phrases I landed on, and a quest you can finish in a single sitting, waiting in The Quest Library.

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