It’s like, the night before my proverbial big day I make all these little plans in my head. I’m going to wake up just a little earlier than I normally do so that I can really take my time getting ready for work. I’m going to put on an outfit that makes me feel confident, I’m going to wear some cute wedges that are Carrie Bradshaw approved and then I’m going to accessorize the absolute shit out of my outfit. I’m going to make sure that I leave early enough to run to Starbucks before work and I’m going to have an awesome, incredibly productive day at work. Then I’m going to meet my handsome husband at the gym, show off my toned shoulders in workout gear with quirky sayings on it and do abdominal crunches until I literally faint. Friends, I’m going to put my best foot forward and I’m going to wow the world.
Let me tell you how it really goes though: I wake up on time (because I’m actually really good at that because I’m paranoid about being late) but other things trip me up and eat up all of my early, allotted time. The cat I adopted from my best friend cries incessantly for water and in my tired attempt to satiate her, I bump the water bowl on the lip of the sink and spill it all over the floor I just cleaned the day before. I tell myself I’m not going to cry about it (because let’s be real: I’m habitually accident prone and crying just seems like a logical go to); I’m just going to wipe it up, pet the cat and take my shot of vinegar. Life goes on.
But what usually happens is my whole day goes like that. For whatever reason, it’s just like one calamity after another. The cute outfit that I planned either doesn’t fit me anymore because I just had to make homemade Alfredo instead of eating chicken and vegetables or I’m lacking the confidence to wear it. But I’m not going to let it get me down because every outfit I own is cute. So realistically, no matter what I wear, I’m going to wow these bitches, right? And of course, my shoes are just going to make the outfit, right? Right?!
But what usually happens is I can already foresee the plethora of blisters that will inevitably form on my feet by the end of my day. I start to think that while Carrie Bradshaw can rock essentially any espadrille, wedge, or peep-toed pump known to man, I am not as fashionably savvy as I would like to be. The reality is that sometimes I just feel safer in sandals or flats. It isn’t because I think they look better because quite frankly, I think flats are basically the most terrible thing ever invented. It’s just that I lack that confidence to “strut my stuff”, as my best friend put it. I feel safer in trendy, strappy sandals. I feel less under the microscope.
And as far as the gym goes? Well, we don’t really have to go into all that. I have to honestly say that as of late, I have been getting better about attending pretty regularly. I’m one of those people that isn’t really wild about working out. That phrase “the struggle is real” was invented for this exact situation and to be honest, I have an enormous repertoire of excuses to miss the gym. And realistically, none of them are even remotely valid. There are just days where I would rather sit on the couch and complain about how I look than actually do something about it. I know that doesn’t make any sense at all. Believe me; I’m well aware of all of it. I didn’t get to almost thirty years old by pretending my excuses work. I know they don’t; I just use them anyway so that I don’t have to flat out say, “You know what? I just don’t want to work out today. I am so past all of it, I just can’t even fathom driving to the gym, changing clothes in a bathroom that is walking distance from a sauna, and dripping in sweat before I touch any weights. I just can’t do it today.”
I may not be where I want to be but I’m thankful for not being where I used to be. –Habeeb Akande
So I started to think about what I wanted out of life and this blog. I began thinking about what it was that I wanted to put out into the world and the people I wanted to benefit from it. I couldn’t believe it when I logged on the other day and saw that I had just shared my one hundred and tenth blog post. I was in awe at how far I have come since I first started, both in my writing styles and the actual life I was leading. I have grown so much over the course of this blogging journey and I feel like having the ability to share my bunny tales, hilarious sex stories, and anecdotes about dreadful men has provided me so much peace. There is a sense of calm in the sharing. I’m reaching at least one person, I always hope. I’m letting them know that they aren’t alone, that I want to listen and share their account. (And that yes, men really are the crazy ones!)
I began to realize that with one hundred and eleven blog posts under my belt, I have finally started to come into my own. You know, I have always heard people say things like, “When you get to a certain age, you’ll stop caring what people think,” or, “As you get older, you start to see how time goes by quicker everyday and you stop taking all those days for granted,” and you know what? It is so true. It is truly a startling thing to uncover.
I was talking to my boss the other day about how I sometimes get insecure to the point of crippling anxiety. I was sharing with her how I sometimes get really bad social anxiety because I feel unattractive and sometimes a little socially awkward or out of place. I know that a lot of these feelings are misguided but they’re still there, getting all up in my personal space. I will stress the entire night before I go to the beach because quite honestly, I’m not in the LeAnn Rimes shape that I crave. I realize how absolutely insane that sounds but I have to tell you: these things really bother me. I dwell on them and it makes me crazy.
About a month ago, I was out on a date with my husband and when I went to the restroom, I [literally] bumped into this man I used to date years ago. It turns out that he wasn’t alone; he was with a ton of people from my high school. They were more or less considered to be the “in crowd” and even now, twelve years later, when everyone is friends on social media and past ALL of that, I shriveled up. I mean, I can’t even guarantee that this man, or any of those individuals from my high school, even recognized me that night but I felt my breath catch in my chest. Immediately, I thought, “They’re going to remember me from high school and they’re going to judge me.” My husband sipped his bourbon and chuckled. “You can’t be serious,” he smirked at me. “You’re beautiful, babe. Let them look at you. Let them see how beautiful you are.”
After I shared a lot of these feelings with my boss, she smiled at me and said, “You know, Kathleen, you frustrate me because you are so confident when it comes to work and advocacy. But when it comes to any topic close to weight, beauty, or fashion you turn into this insecure little person.” When she spoke those words to me I actually bit my lip while I was chewing because it just struck me. It was so clear to me at the moment that the amount of time that I waste worrying about how I am perceived is incredible. It literally consumes me. And there are just so many other things that I could be enjoying.
I obviously realize that worrying and being insecure is a huge waste of time but trust me when I say that if I could control it, I totally would. The other side of the coin is that I am literally surrounded by beautiful people. I mean, I can’t help it that I have gorgeous friends and they make me feel insecure. (When I worked at Victoria’s Secret, oh my gosh, FORGET IT. The beauty in my home store alone was so intimidating, it’s ridiculous. And what’s even worse is all of those beautiful Victoria’s Secret girls are even MORE beautiful on the inside. You just cannot compete with that! That is definitely one strikingly beautiful culture of ladies.)
But it isn’t about them; it’s about me and my lack of confidence. The truth is that your inner critic is an enormous asshole. And while it might seem so easy to just tell yourself you’re beautiful and recite your daily mantra, having real confidence is goddamn difficult. “I realize that I’m probably more attractive and thinner than most,” I told her, “and I realize that people aren’t going to see me on the street and say, ‘Oh my gawd, the thighs on that girl,’ but waking up with natural confidence is a chore.” (And real talk, just the fact that we were having this discussion at work made me feel so shallow that I can’t even. But to be fair, in our industry, I’m sure they have heard a heck of a lot worse.)
She said to me, “Stop worrying about being beautiful. You are. Just be thankful for it.” And that, right there, was the moment. I started to realize that I must sound so superficial, like some less tweaked version of Heidi Montag. Immediately I started to dread the feeling that maybe I was sounding like I was more worried about conforming to the male’s expectation of beauty than being a domestic violence advocate. I started to think that maybe people in the surrounding cubicles listen to me talk and think, “All this girl does is watch reality shows and look at pictures of Nicole Polizzi on Pinterest. Why is she a social worker?”
And forgive me but as much as I ABSOLUTELY LOVE ALL OF THOSE THINGS, I don’t want to be viewed in that light. As much as I wish I was Carrie Bradshaw in basically every single way that ever existed, I want to be heard talking about more things than just MAC plush gloss and the awesome wine colored dress from Express that my best friend sent me from Georgia!
Everybody has a story and they just want to be listened to. –Ed Nygma, Gotham
Moral of the Crazy: So after one hundred and eleven posts about my jillions of neuroses and my tendencies to acquaint myself with terrible men, what have I really learned? After listening to an enormous amount of stories from my girlfriends and their girlfriends, what information have I gathered? And how can I use that vault of information to assist other people? How can I turn these dark, appalling stories into cutesy, cautionary tales that can give people something lighthearted to read? After spending my limited precious moments formulating the words to appropriately convey what it is that I’m feeling and how I’m exhausted with being scorned by men, what exactly have I gained? Have I touched people with my stories? Have I given them appropriate warning for their future relationships? Have I taught them how to identify red flags and triggers? Have I helped them realize which relationships are worth saving and which are worth walking away from? Was there always some light laughter to break up the heartache? Was I always for them?
I know that above all things I have been a good listener. It’s something that I’ve had to work at, in all honesty, only because I have the tendency to act a little ADD, as my mom likes to call it. I have trouble focusing sometimes and although it’s not intentional, sitting still and really listening to someone can take work for me. But I adore it.
I know that one of my favorite things to do is listen to my friends talk about how goddamn awful their boyfriends are. While I would selfishly like to say that I love to listen purely for the sake of writing my blog, that’s not the case. I love to listen because I want to hear their problems not just to offer suggestions, but to enlist in my friendly duties and really hear them. One of my absolute favorite things to do is drink martinis with my girlfriends and listen to them talk about their lives. I could do it professionally, seriously.
I mean, the fact that I can use it for creativity in my blog is just an added bonus.
But because I have always led something of a chaotic life when it comes to friends and relationships, I have to proudly admit that I have just come really far. While it’s true that I’m still pretty neurotic, it is insane to think how much worse I used to be. I used to be concerned with every little thing to the point of making myself physically ill. Now that I’m older and nearing thirty, I’ve found that I still worry about A LOT of unimportant things but there’s also a lot of things that seemed to have just dropped off my radar.
It has taken me a really, really long time but I’m also starting to learn that in addition to not worrying about miniscule things, you have to just let some things (and people) go. I spent way too much time not necessarily worrying about what people thought of me, per se, but how they would react to certain things. In simpler terms, I allowed people to disrespect me purely because I was unable to see standing up for myself as a means of commanding respect rather than just being a salty bitch. I was so fixated on how angry the other person would potentially be when they realized that I had finally stood up for myself. I didn’t want to upset them, I didn’t want to appear like I was being difficult or too sensitive, and I never wanted to cause friction in the relationship. So a lot of the time, in these cases, I would just take it. I would give those people space, allow them the time to “cool off”, and would come back primarily apologizing. I would tell myself that sometimes, when you care about someone, you just take one for the team. Sometimes you’ve just got to let the other person win a couple rounds.
But eventually, I learned that I was a doormat. I let people incessantly take advantage of me because standing up for myself just seemed combative. To be honest, I’m getting better at recognizing when this happens and obviously, life is all about learning and gradual progression. As of now, I just make it my priority to be proactive about working on it and realizing early on when people aren’t treating me with respect. I still have the tendency to want to shrink back instead of saying, “Okay, call me when you’re done being a child and we can communicate better then. Or better yet, don’t call me ever again if you haven’t figured out how to talk to me like a person.” Sometimes it’s just so hard to say things like that to people you care about but real talk: life is way too short to take so much shit.
And I have taken way more than the average person should ever have to.
But there are times when I think that maybe, as far as chronicling my life is concerned, I don’t have to share every little thing with everyone. Sometimes I get the feeling that people are tired of reading about my various calamities, that maybe they find my bitter diatribes about men to be derogatory and self-serving. And while that is absolutely not the case, I guess I could understand why people might see it that way. Sometimes, and in person especially, I feel like I just talk so much. It seems sometimes like I just ramble on and not that it’s about nothing, but that maybe people just aren’t interested in listening. It doesn’t make them bad people; they’ve just got their own things going on.
There are times when this happens and I get this weird, awkward feeling like maybe I’ve just said too much. In these moments, I will say to myself, “You need to just talk less.” I want to be the kind of person that only lets the pertinent words out. When I speak to people, I want it to mean something. I don’t want it to just be filler. I don’t want to just be one of those people insistent on filling the silence. Those are the kind of people that you don’t want to be stuck in an elevator with. They don’t know how to wedge the door open, they don’t know how to use the emergency phone but they will certainly talk you to death.
No, thank you.
I work with this woman at my job whose role is a facilitator. A lot of what she does is record and document information presented by the various advocates and make sure that the staff doesn’t get off track. She’s obviously really brilliant, well-spoken and educated but the thing that I really love about her is the way she speaks, the way she carries herself. She is just incredibly diplomatic, insanely professional and the kindness just radiates off of her. She is ever warm and welcoming and I always tease that she could tell you where to go without you even realizing it. She is just that tactful. When I say that, of course, she just laughs and says, “Well, I don’t know about that.” I want to say, “Trust me lady, I do know about it. It’s an actual struggle for me to formulate a sentence without fuck it in it.”
I want to be the person in the room that knows just what to say and when to say it. I want to be able to tell someone “fuck off” so sweetly that they don’t even realize I’ve insulted them. I want to be able to take any situation that is thrown at me and handle it with class, elegance and diplomacy. I want to be the person that people look to when they are unsure of what to say next. I want to be a guide, someone warm and welcoming, and a person that makes other people feel at ease.
I want to throw all that awkwardness and insecurity out the door. After one hundred and ten blogs, I’ve realized that I want to worry less and live more. I want to talk less and listen more. I want to be more mature and impactful. I want to worry so much less and enjoy life more. I want to live more and share my exciting experiences with others.
But most importantly, what I have learned through all of this, from all of you, is that I want to be who I want to be. I don’t need to mold myself into what society expects of me to be happy. I don’t need to pass out at the gym or starve myself to some weight I’m told. I don’t need to rush to have children or hate myself because I don’t have them yet and everyone else does. I don’t need to go out clubbing every night and post scantily clad pictures on social media to prove that I’m living my life. I don’t need to have this watch, haircut or pair of shoes to be impactful. I just need to be myself. I just need to love myself and the rest will follow.
I want to love myself. I want to be proud of how far I’ve come and just be thankful. Because there is just so much I have to be thankful for.
And most of all, I want to thank all of you.
I want to thank you for reading my nonsense every week, for enlightening me with your remarkable stories, and for reminding me what is important. I want to thank you so much for reminding me what I’m doing here every week behind my computer.
I want to sincerely thank you for your kindness.
Here's to #111!!!
Forever yours,
-K
Rest and be thankful. –William Wordsworth
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