I’m pretty good at self analysis. Maybe a little too good. Sitting in a series of bars last night, I struggled to pinpoint how I contribute to my life turning out how it does. Paige gently commented “you said all this last summer, too. Only about you and Jason.” We sat there for a minute, contemplating the deja vu.
“Maybe,” I said slowly, “Maybe not everything is my fault.”
“I think revelations are your way of coping.” Paige suggested. “It’s why you don’t remember them later on.”
Sometimes self discovery stops being a useful tool to drive growth and becomes a way to blame yourself. Sometimes its easier to make a weak connection to some adolescent barb still lodged deep in adult emotional flesh, than it is to admit someone in your present doesn’t hang the sun, moon, and stars. Sometimes its easier to go down a rabbit hole or after yourself than it is to see what is right in front of you.
I’m Meghan, and I used to be a revelations addict. But now I’ll call a spade a spade.
Pizza with stinging nettles, rosemary, and radish leaf pesto. (Taken with instagram)
From scratch hollandaise on poached eggs with local sourdough bread and bacon. (Taken with instagram)
Breakfast the lunchtime way. (Taken with instagram)
There is nothing quite like perfectly prepared absinthe. (Taken with instagram)
My first radish tartine! (Taken with instagram)
Radish leaf pesto! (Taken with instagram)
Taken with instagram
This has been a bumpy week. I never really had time to bask in the post-vacation glow upon returning from China. 12 hours after getting back to my condo I returned to work only to find myself unceremoniously fired. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming, entirely, or that I’m not relieved and almost glad. If they hadn’t let me go, I was going to quit in the coming weeks. For the past month before my vacation, that job had left me in a state of near-constant anxiety, resplendent with panic attacks and occasions of waking up in the middle of the night crying because I couldn’t change my supervisor’s opinion that I am, and I quote from several comments, “a disappointment.”
I was thinking about this yesterday, as I shared a gazebo sunbeam with Patrick and Rachelle’s cat Minou, after a comment Dave made to me. He said that sometimes he wishes that I liked myself more. An hour or so later, I hung up a long phone call with Courtney, one of my best friends. She too commented that I need to see a little more value in myself— only her comment came from a professional angle, suggesting that I shouldn’t be so surprised several employers want to interview me and that I might not be unemployed for long. Two comments in one day that I need a little more self esteem was a bit of a kick in the pants. I mean, I thought I was doing a lot better than this on the liking myself thing. And I am. But maybe not as well as I thought.
This time last year, I had only just moved into my apartment. I had only been working at my job for a few weeks. I was very recently dumped by a man who had badly bruised my sense of self worth. We met at the last great heights of my codependency while I was still in therapy. He was recently divorced, and couldn’t help but constantly bring up his successful, sophisticated ex-wife, who (though only a couple years older than I) was already chief of her department at a local hospital, had moved into a huge downtown loft after the divorce, and was the living embodiment of Anthropologie’s mythological “it girl.” I couldn’t help comparing myself to her.
As I was struggling to make it out of retail and a sleazy Red Bank rental I shared with three near-strangers, he seemed like a kindly mentor teaching me how to be a classy adult. In hindsight, he was insecure, devastated by the failure of his marriage, emotionally manipulative, and cruelly judgmental. Just when he cut me loose, I was poised to show him how much I’d learned from months of listening to his advice on how to be An Emily. Here I was, in my downtown historic condo, developing a chic work wardrobe, making it as a copywriter. It seemed at the time was the problem was not that he was a tiny little man dealing with a decade of emotional problems and soul-crushing baggage, but that I hadn’t been enough.
I quickly found my new job, despite many perks, was just as much of a no-win situation. My supervisor was type-A, micromanaging, and impossible to please. I never had a good performance review, and she treated me like an incompetent high school student. I had never thought I’d feel again the way I did when my high school chemistry teacher called me “too stupid to turn on a computer” in front of the whole class. Needless to say, I didn’t react favorably to being belittled constantly. I withdrew, became complacent, and made as little effort as possible. It really was like a repeat of high school, at least the way high school was before I got fed up and dropped out to teach myself at home.
In the midst of those two big events, I found my social circle changing. I had spent months without close friends. The stress of senior year had obliterated my rocky college friendships. I had been hanging out mostly with the friends of whoever I was dating, and lost those relationships with each breakup. After Jason broke it off, he left town for a summer session of graduate school, leaving me to hang out with two of his closest friends. They acted like confidants to my face and then turned around to gossip about it to the neighbors. They found my pain entertaining, and loved to play of my insecurities, especially about Emily. I knew they weren’t good friends, but they were as close as I had at the time.
So here I sit, on a beautiful late May afternoon. It’s almost lunchtime, and I haven’t been to the office today. I’m still wearing the slip I slept in and a robe. I’m sipping tea and thinking about what my next move is going to be. I had a couple job interviews this week. One seemed promising. Next week a friend is going to show me an apartment I could move in to— one closer to downtown, cheaper, and where hopefully I won’t be burglarized twice in a month or live across the courtyard from my ex. In the middle of a tough spring that threw just about everything but the kitchen sink at me, I met a wonderful guy, who immediately stepped up to the plate and supported me, despite barely knowing me. He doesn’t judge me, or enable me, but I think he does accept me. I made the most amazing friends this year— girls who will repeatedly tell you for a year that your ex deserves to have his car set on fire, and offer to do it, until you believe them. Girls who are always there to swap dresses, drink wine, and dance to the Gin Blossoms in bars. Girls who tell you how it is, even when how it is is that you’re being kind of stupid, but follow it up with ordering another round and telling you that they love you and think you are great. Friends who defend your apartment with machetes from robbers, who get you hooked up with writing jobs, who smoke hookah with you, and think your crazy is part of the fun.
I don’t think I would be here right now with all that, if I hadn’t learned a few lessons in the past year, if I hadn’t toughened up a little bit in some places, and softened in others. I like myself better than I did a year ago, because now at least a lot of the time I want to be me, and not someone else. That’s progress. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be someone else. Someone artistic, who dresses well, has passion and ambition, is well-respected, and changes the world. Sometimes I wish I were slender and that my hair grew long enough to sit on it. Sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who always left the house put together, and actually did my makeup every day. But more of the time I’m thankful for my curves, and I like that my hair is kind of wild, and I appreciate that I don’t bother with makeup because I don’t think I need it and I have better things to do in the morning, like read comic books.
I like myself better than I did a year ago, because I know that when life is hard, and I’m the only one I can count on, that I make great things happen and find wonderful people who love me for who I am. I still buy too many clothes online when I get insecure, and I don’t always feel like I have a place in the world, or a contribution to make. I’m afraid of being left behind, and of not mattering. But I’m doing so much better than I was. Because even though I’m afraid of those things I know that if they happened, I’d still be ok. I’d still make something good come out of it. Even at your worst, you can still always write a friend a letter or learn to make blackberry jam. But I still have a long way to go.
