Perspective

I find it interesting how others perceive me.  Within the past month or so I've been given a lot of insight - most of it was volunteered to me. I know, right, nobody likes when somebody else's opinion of them is put out there - but this has really been welcome!

First of all, my Uncle posed a question which I answered and his reply was "I've never met anyone so comfortable with their own dysfunction". This was a surprising answer to say the least. Look, if you're the owner of whatever it is that other people call into question and if you're honest about it, the judgment can really only go so far. If you're argumentative and defend yourself without need, well, people act like piranhas that haven't eaten in 2 weeks and will eat you alive before you even know what happened. I don't pull any punches. Being up front and open means nobody has anything to talk about because everyone already knows and it is old news.

A few days after this I was told by a friend how conscious I am of everything and everyone. Never before have I thought of it in this way. Unsure. Worrywart. Obsessive. Nervous. Neurotic. Spaz. Mess. All of these things come to mind....not conscious! What a wonderful way to look at that! Quite often I wish I could go through life without noticing everything all the time. It takes so much painstaking examination. I put myself in everyone else's shoes and it takes forever to compose an email because I think about the person I am sending it to and how it will be received. A simple blog post takes many revisions because the people written about are done so in a loving way, but I'm concerned because it is in print and may come across poorly.

Last year I was told by a woman I had just met at a party that I looked like I had it all together. I chalked it up to her absolute friendliness. Since then though I have been told that there's no way I would have self-esteem issues and I am always very confident.

Speechless. As usual, it's news to me.

I was always the last one picked for sports in elementary school. The last one to know the newest, latest, greatest, IT thing. The one who always needed some obscure punch line explained and until recently, I hadn't embraced being all that funny either. There cannot possibly be any way to overcome that and transform into being confident. So either I play all of this off very, very well or others are better at pinpointing me than I am. I feel like a disaster most of the time and quite uncomfortable in my own skin. Dysfunction is one thing, skin is by far another.

Bizarrely enough, the very thing I was afraid of, turning 30, is the very thing that is helping me. I constantly find myself saying "I'm 30, this is BS and I don't have to put up with it" or "I'm 30, I don't care about that anymore". Of course, the 'I'm 30' part is irrelevant but seems to be the justification in any statement. None of the negative things remembered from the past matter anymore. It doesn't matter who picked who for 1st, 2nd, 3rd or any other grade kick ball. It doesn't matter that I did not play sports because not only am I unenthusiastic about them but I barely understand the rules to begin with. It doesn't matter what went or still goes over my head. People at parties don't know these things and if they did, they wouldn't care.

'I'm 30' needs to be part of the "I'm 30 and it's time to be comfortable in my own skin" statement. It's time to be the way that others see me. And really, without the 'I'm 30', the sentiment is the same.

It's time to just be me.