Metrics

I don't know if I was born with this measuring rod inside my head, but for as long as I have memory, it has been there. You may have one also - I hear many of us humans do.
The metrics on it are peculiar. Sometimes, yes, you may find inches or pounds, miles or minutes, but this is always accompanied by annotation. More often than not, there is simply a name etched in the wood. And I never quite know if today's markings will be the same as they were the day before. They move around, and sometimes they fade to near-illegibility, while a new one is freshly gouged in over it.
I'm referring, you see, to the incessant, addictive, almost automatic comparisons I make - me versus the the rod, me relative to the rest of you.
I have marks for my siblings there, their grades and their accomplishments, how pretty they are and how many friends they have, how much money they have and how obviously they worship God. Many of my friends have left little marks too. There is a particularly troublesome metric I am always trying to pin down - it moves all the time. That one is weight, and sex appeal, and my body when I am getting dressed and nothing, nothing, nothing looks or feels right to wear. It likes to hang around the dots that measure what I ate yesterday and how much, the ones that tell me if I should feel guilty and gross. There's another sort of measurement that, while I try to ignore it, is a constant niggle in the back of my mind. I guess I would call it religiousity, or maybe just acting good. It looks at how I pray, and what I feel, and whether I talked about God or read the Bible or went to church. That one likes to be buddy-buddy with the Mom Metric. God how I hate that one. It moves more than any of the others. You'd think it would settle down - I mean, it's been around longer than anything else on the measuring rod. Yet I still find it in the oddest places. And of course, I have my How-much-money-do-I-make mark, and the good-god-why-are-you-so-dumb mark ...
So you get the idea. The weirdest, most frustrating part of this whole measuring rod thing is that when I lay myself up against it, trying to figure out where I am relative to ... well, relative to everything, I'm pretty much a midget. Extra short. See that mark up there - no, look higher - the one that says "Good Enough"? I never reach it. Sometimes I can stretch and reach to "Sort of Maybe Decently Adequate (for Now)", but not that often. The Overachieving Sibling mark? Never got that high. The Perfect Body/Weight? Never once. Way out of my league. The Good and Godly Evangelista? Ha. Right. Not with my conversion stats and sin-o-meter going. Don't even ask about the Making Mommy Happy and the Accepted and Loved for Being Me metrics. My measuring rod isn't even long enough for those ethereal markings.
I don't really know how to get rid of this measuring rod. I try sometimes to sand out the more irritating metrics, maybe write in a few that are kinder. But like I said, the damn thing changes almost every day anyway. I'm told that being close to God can help the ruler shut up. But all that thought does for me now is make the distance I am below the "Good Christian" mark all the more glaring and painful. I know people who seem like they have, if not a lesser need to compare, at least a greater ability to tell the comparisons to shove it. Being around those people, having them tell me what matters and what sort of doesn't, can tone things down. I just have to wear selective earplugs so I hear them over the nattering babble.