From: Dear Me: A Collection of Letters Addressed to Various Aspects of My Self … ©Dorothy Chiotti, Aimwell CreativeWorks 2013
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The fourth in a series of letters addressed to my critical Self. The date is the actual date it was written as a free writing, and freeing, exercise.
July 11, 1013
Dear Critical One ~
Why is it that you are the first one to greet me in the morning?
I awaken to a beautiful day after a night of broken sleep; I look at the clock and it’s later than I’d like, but instead of allowing me to be grateful for the fact I have the luxury of sleeping in if I need it (which evidently I do this week) you clime in “You should have been up two hours ago … “?
And that’s the problem ~ you’re unrelenting and “shoulding” me to death!
You “should” the smile right off my face.
“You should do it this way” or “you should have done it that way.”
Instead of allowing me to enjoy the process you question and nitpick everything I do. You make it almost impossible for me to be happy with anything I do or achieve.
And I say almost because things are changing.
I’m changing.
Your power is becoming less potent though I feel it more acutely. In your desperation to hang on to whatever power as you suppose you have over me your methods become more grasping.
Would you really criticize me for spending some of my precious time cleaning up after my sick dog?
Criticize me because I am not spending it writing which, as you know is what I really want to do.
Don’t you know that when you do that you interfere with my right and ability to nurture what I love?
This is true of my writing also.
Every time you wholesale delete something I’ve created from awareness you make me feel as if my voice is of no importance and no one should hear it.
I know at some mislead level you’re trying to protect me, but what you need to understand, and I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, is that you are actually strangling my ability to express myself … and it’s just not on!
Do you have any idea just how negative you are?
Have you not understood or, rather, observed how I have, during the past several years, divested myself of the negative voices around me? Those voices that fed you and funded all my insecurities?
They are gone.
You “should” be feeling weaker. And perhaps you are. Perhaps now you are hanging on for dear life, going down kicking and screaming.
It’s difficult for me to love you into submission. You’ve been so damaging and I see that I am still angry about it.
But you will submit, make no mistake. I’m standing up to you and your bullying ways. I know what’s good for me, and you are not among them.
Look inward, dear Critical One. What’s eating you that you feel the need to eat away at me?
Lovingly,
Dorothy
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©Dorothy Chiotti, Aimwell CreativeWorks 2013
Shedding Light on the Family Tree 