Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

This was not a compliment.

There was no accompanying sigh, but the disappointment seemed audible. I had been summed up and found to be flawed. Dismissed.

To be fair, several other people and situations had been summarily assessed and found to be lacking – parents, loved ones, jobs, the economy, the Republican party, even the speaker herself was pronounced impossible of changing and therefore lackluster. No one, according to the speaker, was capable of any kind of change that could actually make a difference.

I’ve been summed up like this before. Only usually by myself. I have a long list of failings that are excruciatingly obvious, and to the speaker’s credit, not much on that list has changed since I began drafting it, back in the days when I knew my flawed self was destined to be set outside everyday life because I was not only unlike everyone else, but less than. Less smart. Less pretty. Less able to understand what on earth went on between people. Less able to conquer geometry when the objects left the paper and were to be manipulated in one’s mind. Less able to get a date. Less able do something with my curly hair. Less able to grasp politics. Less able to relate smoothly to work or school superiors, or, for that matter, those who worked under me. Less able to relate to my parents. Less able to make friends. Less able to think I am wrong even though I’m nearly in a constant state of wrongness because otherwise I’d know how to do these things.

So here I am, inching toward 50, and realizing that I know every one of my flaws. Perhaps they take the place where other people have large circles of close acquaintances; I have my circle of well-known, well-documented flaws.

When the speaker made the pronouncement, my response surprised me.  I didn’t agree wholeheartedly and throw my weak and rotten Self under the bus. I didn’t go down the list of the speaker’s flaws, retaliating and deflecting in a pathetic form of protecting against shame (something that’s been on my list of failings for a very long time).  I heard myself say, “But I don’t want to change anymore.” Not out loud, because unable to say what I want to under pressure is still on the list.

But I heard it. Against all odds, I’ve come to enjoy being me. I can’t say I enjoy my flaws, but I don’t hate them anymore. I no longer need them gone. When I sum myself up, I come out so far ahead that the list of flaws almost seems quaint. Like the way you feel when a friend’s child comes to you and tells you that nobody likes them, and you hold the grown-up sense of how terribly painful those moments are, but you aren’t convinced for one second that this vivacious, perfect child is anything other than a wonder, and you pray they’ll find this out soon.

I didn’t find it out soon, but I found it out. I’m a wonder. Not great, not puffed up beyond reason. Just pretty darned fine, flaws and all. I’ll not master many of them; OK, I won’t master any of them. The speaker was right. I’ll never change.

Except that I have. I don’t want to change, and that’s perhaps the most fundamental and useful change I could have made. And I found a good stylist.