A Diamond in the Buff

January 26, 2009

For years I’ve gone from pillar to post trying to improve myself. I was in a starter home. A fixer upper. I was under construction so much I needed a building permit. Always in search of the next book, the next DVD, class or teacher because I thought it took a village to raise a neurotic.

I did everything. I envisioned prosperity, got my colours done. I found out what colour my parachute was. I pushed the envelope; I thought “outside the box”, explored the power of positive thinking until I was suicidal. I saw Anthony Robbins so many times he got a restraining order. If I were a reality show I would have been called Extreme Make Over.

My life coach called it perfectionism. Perfectionists call it having standards. This was the same coach who said I needed to love my self. This infuriated me. It’s like someone saying, “Will you calm down?” You just want to ram them with your car. I fired that coach and got a new one who recommended I stand naked in front of a mirror and say I love my body. So I started to take my shirt off and he said, “No, wait until you get home”. See, even he wasn’t committed. I don’t know why this coach was in such a hurry for me to love myself. It’s like a minister saying, “Go and sin no more”. If people like me weren’t sinning there would be no bums in those pews, would there? So me loving myself would be bad for business. In fact if I wasn’t a seething morass of low self esteem these people would be unemployed. And that would be bad for the economy. I am pretty certain my OCD helped my third therapist buy her new house. I said I am pretty certain my OCD helped my third therapist…… Oh never mind.

It’s bad enough that I thought I was broken but I spread the joy around. I tried fixing people who thought they were perfectly fine until I came along. I became a motivational speaker. I motivated everybody. Maybe that old lady didn’t want help across the street. Maybe she was just hailing a cab. I motivated my hairdresser so much he became my landscaper. Instead of trimming my bangs, he now trims my bonsai. My kids didn’t escape either. I dragged them from harp to piano to soccer lessons. Meanwhile the physical exercise I got was lifting the Timbits to my mouth. I made every event a Kodak moment until I was exhausted and now if they ever do thank me, it’s usually for some darn thing I don’t remember doing for them in the first place. I tried to improve their genetic lot in life. I enrolled them in French Immersion. I can’t speak French. Some of my family don’t speak English that well, eh? But I wanted them to be bilingual. Now I can’t understand a word they’re saying.

They should come with subtitles. After all of that sacrifice they ran away from home. Sure it was to start university but they never even said good-bye. They said au revoir, farewell, auf veidersehen. They sang it in three part harmony because they’re musical theatre students. I might as well have raised circus clowns. I’m left alone by myself in the empty nest that I have to clean myself because I motivated the cleaning lady so much she’s in med school. Maybe she’ll support me in my dotage because the kids aren’t going to be able to. What do you call a performing arts student with a Bachelor of Arts degree? Living with your Mom. The Sequel.

I am not worried about it. No. I don’t worry as much as I used to. In the old days there was worrying to be done and I was the one to do it. I worried on behalf of everybody. My favourite activity was something I liked to call preventative worrying - where you worried ahead of time so that when something did happen you wouldn’t be surprised. Now, I can’t be bothered because everything that I thought could happen to me actually has. Shakespeare said: “Life is but a stage and we are merely players” but I say by the end of your life you’ve played all the parts. I have been a jerk, been treated like a jerk, been jerked around by a jerk.

I am making friends with my vices. I do things too quickly. My Tai Chi instructor says I move so fast it looks like I am disco dancing. As a survivor of the Donna Summers era I take that as a compliment. My friends say I have attention deficit disorder but they’re wrong. I have attention surplus disorder. I can hold a grudge for years. I don’t tolerate fools gladly. My rule of thumb is I can think they’re fools but they’re not allowed to think I’m one.

There is a release in knowing I have no untapped potential. I have stopped hoping others have any either. Like when people tell me who they are I believe them. I wasn’t always like this. When I was young if a boyfriend said hey I am bad news I thought he was kidding. But today I would believe him, because I have found men are like cigarettes. The warning is right there on the package yet I go ahead and light up anyway.

As an aside, I’ve noticed that there is no self-improvement section in the bookstore for men. No book called Men Who Love Too Much. Men tend to fix things not people. They tinker with engines, not personalities.

So at the dawning of the New Year I’ve decided to accept that maybe my house is in order. Sure I may need a coat of paint here and there but it’s too much effort to rewire myself. Some may call this denial. I think denial has had a bad time of it in this society.

I don’t mean to be motivational about this, but if I can accept myself so can you. Go into the bathroom right now and take off your clothes and look in that mirror and say, “Hey I might as well love this body the way it is, because ten years from now this one’s going to look pretty darn good.” Do that a few times without puking, then try it with the lights on.

After all you are a diamond in the buff.

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