I am sitting on my therapist’s couch (just like in the movies!) and struggling to get the words out of my mouth hole. I want to effectively convey the insecurity that rushes through my bones during the waking hours of my life. I don’t know when this acute self-consciousness bore its way into my body. It seems to have always been there while also, simultaneously, appearing out of nowhere — today, yesterday, five years ago.
The words that are gibber jabbering out of my lungs and into the air of this tiny room are stupid. I can tell you that much. I’m blubbering. I’m stuttering. I’m grasping for the ideas that will make this all come together yet are so far out of reach that I know I’ll never quite be able to catch them.
I don’t want to keep referring to her as “my therapist” because it honestly sounds so fucking cliché, and I just can’t. But I also haven’t asked her if she’d mind if I use her name in my writing, and I really don’t want to cross that line. After a mere two visits, she has quickly become a lifeline. So instead, I’ll call her Beth. I once knew a very kind and lovely bus driver named Beth, so the name seems fitting.
Beth doesn’t judge me when I sit there crying. She also doesn’t tell me how to fix my problems. She says things like, “Should we try to work this out together, Lindsay?” And I answer, yes. Although I secretly wish she’d just advise me on every decision I must make.
Wait. Would hiring an advisor solve all my problems?
Beth would tell me, no, but I may investigate this idea further.
. . .
I came across a perfectly round tiny stone on my walk today. It was weird because I had just glanced down amidst a sea of pebbles on the pathway, and my gaze went directly to this one disk-shaped rock. This intense surge of glee tore through me, and I yelled, “Lucy! Look, a perfectly round stone!.”
Lucy, the dog, looked at me dubiously, saying, “It’s just a rock, lady. Let’s get moving. I need to pee on that desiccated tree stump over there.”
I tried to walk away from it, but something stopped me and, just as a child would, I ran back and plucked the stone up off the ground and shoved it in my pocket.
Once home, I examined the rock only to find it wasn’t perfectly round. There were dents and crannies I previously ignored. On closer inspection, Lucy was right; it was just a damn rock. Why had I gotten so excited about this thing?
Yet rather than tossing it out into the backyard, I stuffed it in my pocket again for safekeeping. I couldn’t throw it out.
I don’t know how young I was when I began to worry about what other people thought. Maybe I’ve always worried about it. We start young, us people pleasers. We work hard to make sure we are the humans our parents, teachers, aunts, and uncles want us to be. We crave that pedestal — there we shall sit pompously, lording it over all the minions beneath us who didn’t have the gumption to get perched there themselves.
Only recently did I come to understand that this is what I’ve been doing my entire life. I didn’t pander to the needs of others because I genuinely have a good heart and a giving soul. I could give a shit less about helping a stranger. I want the recognition. I crave the dopamine that shoots into my brain-crevices each time someone tells me I’m doing a good job or I’m pretty, or that little jig I just spontaneously did was very interesting indeed.
I am a trained monkey looking for her banana treat.
I’ve spent so much of my time worrying about my appearance, the perfect things to say and write (I’ve been building my brand long before “branding” was a buzzword), and the way others perceive me, I haven’t truly thought about what or who I really want to be.
Beth doesn’t judge me when I tell her I sometimes crave the idea of being selfish. I say it in a way that she probably should judge because “I just don’t want to care so much about other people” is mouth vomit at its worst. But Beth is either a very skilled actress or impeccably trained in her profession. Probably the latter because she tells me that it’s normal for people-pleasers to want to be selfish sometimes. She always tells me that the things I’m feeling are normal, and weirdly enough, this is very comforting.
I am learning how to be more assertive. I’m learning how to please those who I genuinely want to please rather than looking for some stilted self-appointed consolation prize for putting others before myself. I’m learning how to live in this awkward skin suit and enjoy the ride — not giving a hoot about what the onlookers are saying.
I now look at my tiny, almost-round pebble sitting on the table beside me. There is something magnetic about this silly little thing, yet the more I look at it, the more normal it appears. But I guess that’s the beauty of it. There is absolute splendour in the everyday things.
Five years ago, we’d see influencers made up of model fare — something we could all aspire to but never achieve. This was a brilliant marketing ploy because it kept us buying the products, watching the videos, and creating the content to burrow closer to the holy grail of social media royalty.
However, now, the tides are turning. We see influencers such as Elyse Myers, who normalizes mental health and make-up-free posting — she is the epitome of the everyday normal. Celebrities are following suit and normalizing the normal, the ugly, the mundane, which, is pretty much a miracle in and of itself.
It’s beautiful and authentic, and I am absolutely here for it.
We are all just tiny almost-round stones.
At first, we try to hide our flaws because we worry about what others might say about our dents and dimples. But eventually, it becomes clear that nobody cares about your dents or dimples because they’re too worried about their own dents and dimples. Our dents define us. Our awkward skin suits may not appeal to some, but who cares? They’re ours, and they allow us to run through forests and do weird little jigs because we want to and not because we’re looking for a banana muffin prize for our brain.
Our brain dents, skin suits, and word wizardry are all awkward in their own way. Like my tiny almost-round stone, I think that’s unimaginably beautiful.
I’m pretty sure Beth would call this realization a breakthrough.
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This post was previously published on Lindsay Rae Brown’s blog.
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