Quite true. Self-defeating “internal narratives” run rampant. In general, you absolutely do get what you tell yourself that you’re going to get,(within reasonable boundaries).

Personally, I’ve lived a long and, as in the Chinese curse, interesting life.

I finally decided to be sober and clean…and happy about it, content, at peace with myself, and the world.

Alcoholism and despair over my transgender condition have led me to royally screw up my life, in almost every way possible, shy of complete insanity or death.

I find myself in a position that I never considered as a possibility, (though I have been unwittingly working toward it all of my life), a “cat-bird-seat”, built of 60 years of strife, struggle, with myself and society. I sit, often, and simply observe, continuing always to learn, to seek to understand.

Having studied psychology, and quite a few other disciplines, always reading and observing, since I was a small child, I was constantly studying, learning, in an effort to understand both myself, the people around me, and society in general.

The vast majority of my troubles, I have caused myself. Sometimes, in a fit of frustration, having a knowingly self-destructive petulant-frenzy. I was unable to see that I was the root cause of nearly all of the problems that I railed against.

I was also unable to see how intensely self-centered I was.

In a good mood, I was going to conquer every goal that I had. In a morass of depression, my world, my universe, was collapsing.

I’ve come to realize some things. I’ve actually had a much, much easier life than most people. Being tall, slim and attractive,(both as a man and a woman), and white, with a Stanford-Benet IQ score of 147, a doting widowed mother, who did the hard work of getting us to the “upper middle class”, I’ve been extremely privileged, from the moment I became a viable embryo.

Throughout my life, anything that I seriously wanted to do, I was very successful in. Simply because of my appearance and intelligence, people enthusiastically helped me, no matter how badly I screwed up.

Because of my internal narrative I sabotaged myself over and over, yet always being helped up, propped up, again and again.

At a young age, I became “hell-bent” on self destruction, and though I did manage to work pretty continuously, marry and produce offspring, I left a path of petulant destruction in my, considerable, wake.

At 61, I don’t know if I’ll have another “surge” of success, but, at this moment, I’m satisfied to simply be at peace, to recharge, to allow myself to work through, and past, the mental, emotional, and physical mess that I’ve made of myself.

If I simply sit here for the rest of my life, occasionally scribbling an extremely long response,(😉🤭), watching my modest, but secure, income appear in the bank every month, continuing to learn, to study the human “condition”, I’m grateful to have the opportunity.

I could have ended in a much worse way.

Peace Love Kindness Respect the more you give the more you get 😍 start with yourself 😉 because you deserve it ❤️🙏🏼

Thank you Perry, for sparking me to put some thoughts together.😘🙏🏼