Let’s say your life, upon completion, ends up looking something like this.
[Yes, that’s a cake.]
…mmmmm….cake….
Our lives, no matter how we choose to live them, are an addition of experiences, choices, actions, intentions, people, and feelings. Like ingredients, we mix these things together to create something we hope turns out wonderful.
Your life is a cake, and you are the baker.
Have you ever played poker?
I love to play. My dad taught me at a young age, and I grew up playing cards with uncles and cousins.
In the game of poker, there’s a term called “pot committed.” All things considered, between the hand you’re holding, the other players you’re betting against, the stack of chips in front of you, and the amount of your stack you’ve already pushed into the pot, “pot committed” means one thing.
You HAVE to play.Read More
I am a Body Dysmorphic.
In scientific terms, that means I am “characterized by persistent and intrusive preoccupations with an imagined or slight defect in my appearance.” It means I struggle with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive thoughts about the way I look.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, it means I have a chronic mental illness.
(That should probably bother me, but it doesn’t really… I always knew I was a little bit crazy.)
In layman’s terms, Body Dysmorphia means “I don’t like my body.” There are parts I would even say I hate. I don’t hate all of the parts, just some. And, those parts I hate, I spend a heck of a lot of time thinking about them. They’re always there. Whereas most (normal) people exist in their skin without giving their body much thought, I think about my body all. the. time.Read More
So… I’m kind of a perfectionist.
[I can hear the people who know me best, snorting and laughing. My brother’s guffaws are loudest. JUST SHUSH, BROTHER. I KNOW.]
Really though, JUST KIND OF. I’m kind of a perfectionist.
My brother’s laughter is not without warrant. I used to be an over-the-top, anal retentive, angry, bossy, OCD, anxiety ridden, control freak perfectionist. I’m not anymore. [Seriously guys, really.]
After years and years of driving myself into the dirt, setting personal goals to deliver the world and then feeling like a failure if I didn’t OVERdeliver the whole effing universe, hating myself for never living up to what I could be instead of what I AM, I got tired of it.
Sure, there are still things that I get clenchy about.
Like making my bed. I can go from zero to bitchface in the same amount of time it takes a small child to jump into my halfway-made bed, which (I have found) is less than one second. I like straight, tight sheets and covers, pillows plumped just right, cases clean and all facing the same direction. Once the bed is made I don’t expect it to stay that way, but while I’m making it, BACK OFF.
I like my closet arranged “just so.” I arrange all the shirts on matching hangers, facing the same direction, in order of sleeve length and sub-categorized by color, partially because it makes me happy, but also because I can tell simply by looking which shirts are in the laundry, and what color laundry needs to be done next.
This last weekend, I attended a personal development workshop.
There were 25 of us in attendance. We filled one small meeting room. For the duration of the event, I was seated next to and paired with a delightful woman. Her name is Kate. She offers personal coaching, owns her own business(es), and is raising a BE.YOOTIFUL. little girl, all by herself. Kate is a powerhouse of a human being, independent, strong, outspoken, and she lives her life louder than any other woman I’ve ever met. I was in awe of her at first sight (and a little intimidated, to be honest), and my awe deepened as I got to know her over our few days together.
Kate’s sense of style cannot be overstated. For the event, she was wearing a little black dress and super cute, wedge heels. We worked together as partners throughout the day, and every time I was asked to turn and look at her face I was impressed. I would turn toward her, take in her genuine smile, the frenzy of intelligence behind her eyes, and the don’t-let-the-serious-topic-fool-you-I-am-a-bad-ass gold, hoop piercing in her nose, and I had the same thought every time.
“Damn.”
EVERY TIME. Same thought.
“Damn.”
(I also thought “great rack, amazing eyelashes, I love the bangs,” and every time I hugged her I immensely enjoyed her curvy goodness, but yes. Mostly just “…DAMN.”)
At one point in my not-so-distant past, sitting next to Lovely Kate would have made me want to hide. (Seriously. She’s so amazing.) She is confident. She is absolutely GIRL. She is intelligent, feminine, sexy, strong. She is, in my mind, what I should probably want to be. The put-together, intentional, presidential persona she so successfully displays is what every professional, confident woman should strive for.
…yeaaaaahhh………
I’m so, so, so, SO SO SO not like Kate.Read More
I consider myself to be an expert-level goal setter.
This makes me sound arrogant and kind of like an asshole, but it’s true.
I’m not super good at a lot of stuff. I can’t dance to save my life. I can’t twerk (my kids groan when I try, and I threw my back out once). I can’t sing well, so I make up for lack of pitch with volume. I can’t lie without twitching and folding (horrible at poker), I don’t play a musical instrument, I don’t sit still long enough to tolerate knitting, cross stitch, or crochet.
GOALS, though. I can do goals.
As a go-big-or-go-home kind of person, I LIKE goals. Goals get me efficiently where I want to go. I like BIG goals. I like setting a goal that makes me a little bit afraid, because I know I’m going to have to dig deep to crush it. I have a pretty active and brilliant imagination, so the goals I come up with in my head are quite detailed.
And, as far as execution goes, I almost always hit the goals I set for myself. I can’t remember the last time I set a goal and didn’t accomplish it. My cycle of success is (finally) established, and I don’t fail often.
EXCEPT WITH WEIGHT LOSS.Read More
Last night, I had a bad dream.
It was a lucid dream. It was a dream that was so real, I woke up in a daze. The lines between sleep and reality were blurred for a long while after the alarm went off, and even after I was up and walking around, the dream clung to me like sticky, wet fog. It clogged up my brain like cotton wool, and stuck behind my eyes like the brightness-burn you get after staring at your computer for too long, when every blink illuminates against the inside of your eyelids a perfect, colorless, reverse image of real life.
The dream I had was about real life, and it still burns.
The life and the dream.
When I was six or seven, I was the target of sexual assault. The abuse lasted almost three years. I don’t think of it often, and until I had a daughter that hit the age I was when it happened, I never thought of it at all. Those memories were dark and ugly, denied and decidedly irrelevant, tucked away in the back-most corners of my head. I didn’t drag them out, I didn’t talk about them, and the armed guard in front of the closet door where they lived knew to not let anyone inside.
There they sat.Read More
Imagine that your life is a road.
Whether long and winding or short and straight, your life is a road, complete with switchbacks, pit stops, mountains, bridges, crossroads, trial, trouble, and adventure.
On this road, to get from here to the end, you are given one car. Just one, and you must drive. You cannot walk, and you don’t get to pick the car you get. Make, model, color, size, quality, seating capacity, cupholders. You get what is decided for you.
You set out on your journey, face forward, peering intently through the windshield. You are excited! The road of life is good. Your soul is full of hope and promise, “because ROAD TRIP,” and your heart leaps at every single magnificent view as you pass it by. You see amazing things, you feel amazing things, you overcome obstacles in the road in an amazing way.
At the beginning of your journey and well into the middle, your car is like-new and reliable. It turns when you tell it to turn, when your feet reflect the speed of your heart and push the pedal down, the car speeds up and slows down as you’d expect. You sometimes have a few hiccups because of required maintenance, but the car gives back to you what you put into it. When you take care of the car, it takes care of you.
And so you drive.
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You’re being lied to.
[“No, no, no, no one is lying to me. The people in my life tell me the truth.”]
You spoke up quick! I’m so glad. How have you been? ….but yeah no. You’re being lied to, and a lot. People tell you lies all the time, and some of them are big ones.
[“…well, I guess people tell me white lies sometimes, but just to make me feel better, or to keep me safe, or because they love me. I do it too sometimes. Those don’t really count.”]
Yes, they do count. And YES, you do it too, and way more than “sometimes.”
Whether disguised as half-truths or white lies, lies are still lies. They still count.
Sometimes we tell ourselves lies because we need to feel better. We intentionally convince ourselves of something that isn’t true, because dealing with the lie is way more palatable. “These pants are tight, I must be bloated from p-week.” (Couldn’t have anything to do with the family size bag of –itos I ate for lunch yesterday, but whatever.) Sometimes we don’t THINK we’re lying, but we purposefully avoid facing something we don’t want to acknowledge. Avoiding truth is still lying. “She’s my MOM, I know she loves me.” (Nevermind that you feel sick dread before you see her, she drags you through the ringer when she’s with you, and you feel like crap for days after you’ve visited.)
When it comes to truth and lies, there is no middle ground. Things are TRUE, or they’re not.
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When I was a kid, I was raised with pretty simple ideals.
Be polite. Be real. Focus only on things that make you better, things that expand your mind, and things that are a good use of your time. Tell the truth. Be kind. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Do what you say you’re going to do, even when it’s hard, even when no one is watching. Fulfill your commitments. Be on time. Watch your words, for the words you speak decide for others who you are. Be responsible for yourself. Pick up your own mess. Dress in a way that exemplifies your character. Leave everything better than how you found it. Stand up for yourself. Stand up for others. Life is 10% what happens and 90% how we react to it. Choose a positive attitude. Treat others with love, grace, and respect, no matter what.
SIMPLE. Good. All good things. All good ideas, all good beliefs. If I were to read you these ideals one at a time, I doubt you’d have a problem with any of them. These are the kinds of things we raise our kids to believe, the personality and character traits we hope others see in us. When I die, I want people to say I did all these things.
Except now, it seems to me that life and relationships are getting way more complicated.
As dumb as it is, these simple ideals all have caveats. Conditionals. Every single one of them has an “except” added to it.
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