blame it on me.
March 21, 2003 05:24 PM

Milli Vanilli told you to Blame it On The Rain
but if you blame it on the rain tell me
what can be gained so, if all else fails you can blame it on me.

I have this problem.

Things go wrong, I blame them on me. Some time ago, eris talked about procrastination as a symptom of fear. A lot of what she had to say ties back to the idea of defeated perfectionism, of having ideas so big and bright you fold in on yourself in light of the potential to not realize them.

I could relate to that at points in the past.

Now, I have a different problem: blame.

I've talked before about my internal locus of control as if it's something to cherish. And it is, to an extent, the core of me. I couldn't be me without the feeling that my world is shaped by me.

I don't usually need to be encouraged to move or change, for instance. I weigh things carefully, I decide. I know my decisions are important, that I have power. I don't fear that others will stymie my ideas.

No, I just worry that I'll screw things up somehow.

I don't exactly sit around thinking "I'm going to screw something up. I know I will. I know I will. I suck." No. I wait until I do fail, usually in some minor way, and I shred myself for it. I am completely unforgiving. Every failure, however slight, is a sign of my greater, essentially unworthiness.

Worse, from a career perspective, I eagerly take the blame for any failure with which I'm vaguely involved. Working in a political climate that tends to reward insistence and defensiveness, my self-blaming heroics are self-destructive on a whole new level.

Not that I sit at work, or even at home, thinking "I'm unworthy, I suck, I'm bound to fail". Just, when I do fail - it's virtually impossible for me to think of it as anything but my fault.

And I'm working on it. I've been working on it for a long time, enough that I've managed to completely blame others on a few occasions when I was somewhat at fault. But I still have to work at it.