The only thing wrong with you

For many, many years, I thought that there was something wrong with me, something that everyone could see but me. I was never quite sure what it was, though. I struggled to fix what I could and hide what I couldn’t fix, and I was either apologetic or defensive about the things I could neither change nor conceal.

I knew, intellectually, that being myself would be a hell of a lot easier than always trying to be someone else. But emotionally, I didn’t feel like I had a choice. Because I had the nagging sense that something about me was fundamentally unlikeable, I was afraid people would reject my true self. Yet despite all my attempts to present only the parts of myself most likely to please the person I was with at the time, I could never be sure if anyone actually liked me. If I stopped fixing and hiding and doing my chameleon routine for even a second, people would immediately realize that the picture on the box didn’t match the contents. And nobody likes being misled.

Trying to appeal to everyone and offend no one is one hell of a double bind. Sisyphus himself would understand what an endless task it is.

One day, though, out of nowhere, I had a remarkable idea: Perhaps the only thing wrong with me is…the idea that something is wrong with me. And I thought, you know, why not behave as though that’s true and see what happens?

It’s such a novel notion that I can’t always hang on to it. To be honest, I have to watch myself constantly to keep from slipping back into the belief that I’m not “good enough” just as I am. If I’m an acquired taste, I worry — despite plenty of evidence to the contrary — that perhaps no one will acquire it.

And yet the little green shoots of the idea keep growing. Maybe the things about me that I’ve thought of as flaws are really just facts, neither good nor bad. And maybe instead of trying to compensate or apologize for them, I should try embracing them.

If I believe that, then I don’t need to fix myself or improve myself, because I’m not broken or inadequate in the first place. I just have to reveal my true self, trusting that while I’m not to everyone’s tastes, I also don’t have to be.

What do you think?

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