This part sucks

I know exactly how I am.
What it’s like, I mean, to experience me.
To watch me break my promises.
To hear my thoughts

I’m better now.
Not all the way better, but more than before.

I know therapy-speak tends to avoid the idea that anything is “wrong” with a person.
But there are some things wrong with me.

There’s a part of me that digs its heels in and slows to a crawl whenever anyone tries to coerce or motivate me.
Nearly anyone telling me to do anything freezes me.
Even me.
My reality-language isn’t on demand.
That part of me prefers pie-in-the-sky thinking.

If a building’s on fire, I don’t respond to “Get the fuck out!”
I need, “I wonder what’s going on outside?”
Sometimes even disbelief works—“I bet you can’t save yourself.”
It might sound charming, but it’s a problem.

Then there’s the part of me that wants.
Insistent, compulsive, and judging me by how close I stay to my whims.
If it had its way, I’d do what I want all the time.
But sometimes getting what you want keeps you from really getting what you want.

Then there’s the serious one.
The one that lives heavy, and righteous, and alone.
So fucking alone.
The part that makes board games miserable and relationships impossible.

I don’t know exactly how I am to other people.
Sometimes they love the parts I can’t bear.
I wish I could hear every conversation people have had about me, even if it’s none of my business.

I’d study them.
I’d change for them.
Stop the things they hate.
I already try.

I’m becoming gentler.
More even-keeled.
Softer.
Curious.
Kind.
Still learning not to say a cross word.
It’s good work.

And then there’s a part of me that wants out of everything. A five year old with blisters in his boots five minutes into the hike who is shutting down quick. He’s also a retiree on rent control making sure I follow the rules in my internal hoa. Or maybe more like a thirty year old without a job because of an inheritance and a terminal case of perpetual dissatisfaction. Either way he’s not going anywhere.

He’s the hardest to live with.
He needs some mix of “You’re right, that’s fucked up, we’ll do better,”
and being shown a good time—being shown he’s needed—
even if I have to drag him around in all his grumpery.

I can’t fight him, or brush him off, I can just throw my arm around his shoulder and tell him we got this.

I’m not exactly trying to fix these parts anymore.
Not really.
Even if aome other part of me would feel better if they changed.

So now I’m working on the part that’s trying to accept the parts that want to change the parts. It’s turtles all the way down.

On some level is it okay to say,
“Sometimes I wish I were a little bit different—and it’s okay that I’m not”

or is that sentiment another thing I’ve got not quite right.