This shouldn't be a surprise to me . . .

When I was a kid I drew a good bit.

I never thought I was going to be the next da Vinci or anything, but I enjoyed it, and I wasn't bad at it, and if I'd kept doing it I'd probably be a pretty passable artist by now.

Why did I stop? Because someone who played a prominent role in my life at that time disparaged my drawings and paintings, and constantly belittled my attempts at any sort of artistic expression. This person was crazy--she found everything a threat to her own status, and her strategy in dealing with this was to lash out and attack, constantly and without mercy. I was her favorite target--there was nothing  I did right. I remember a prolonged discussion about how I breathe incorrectly. Seriously.

Anyway, this person was crazy, and even though I knew at the time that she was nuts and I could see that her own family wasn't spared from her insecurity and her unrelenting attacks, for some reason I believed her criticisms when it came to me.

Which, now that I think about it, makes no sense. Why was she so wrong about everybody else, but right about me?

Answer? She wasn't. I just chose to think so. This crap stopped me from doing something I enjoyed doing for damned near thirty years.

No, I don't blame her. I blame myself for giving this lunatic that kind of power. It won't happen again. Not with her, of course,, but she's been out of my life for a long time now, but with anybody who feels the need to attack me.

My own lesson from this, what I'm trying to impart to anyone who bothers to read this, is this--if someone criticizes you, especially harshly and cruelly, look at how you feel about this person. Is he or she crazy? Stupid? Monumentally insecure? If the answer to any of those questions is Yes then that person's opinion has no validity and shouldn't be taken seriously. If you see him (or her) attacking someone else for no apparent reason, if you see her disparaging somebody else's work even though you know it doesn't deserve it, why is he wrong about that but right about you?

Answer--because this person isn't right about you. This person is as wrong about you as he is about the others.

Granted, you may not be in a position to ignore this person--I certainly wasn't, at the time, as this person was a family member--but you can give his opinion the weight it deserves.

Which is, in fact, no weight at all.