Taking One

A short but interesting observation. In the last couple weeks I have gotten some out-of-the-ordinary compliments for me. Yunno not the usual ones that I can handle. Not things like - Wow! What a great idea. You are so smart. I can't believe you got that to work! Did you really make that? Specifically, in the last couple weeks I have been told I was as cute, thinner (obviously someone who needs to have their eyes examined STAT), funny, beautiful, sweet or *ackgasp* desirable. Each of these unsolicited and genuine. My reaction: 

1. Confusion - perhaps even turning around to see who they might be talking to. 
NOT KIDDING. I DID this - even knowing there was no one anywhere around us. 
2. Dissembling and changing the subject
3. Laughing it off as if you just told me a great joke.

But each time the response from the complimentor has been the same. ::Head shakes:: 'Just say Thank you Mary'. 

Still confused but always obedient, Mary mumbles 'Thank You'. 

So why is it so much harder to accept one compliment and not another? ::Mary mulls for a moment - engages alliteration mode:: Some things fall easily within the purview of how I see myself. I have been the smart kid my whole life (in case the use of the word purview did not immediately key you in to that) so of course I know how to handle compliments around that. I have had a lifetime to practice accepting those graciously. And I have no doubt about my own intelligence. I know I am not Nobel prize smart, but I can think my way out of a paper bag if I have to. 

So why are those other compliments like Kryptonite for me? Hmmmm.....

Because they fall outside my understanding of myself. (Owwwwwww). In fact, they land a little too close to that soft underbelly where I feel most vulnerable and rather than allow someone anywhere near that I will laugh or change the subject and tell myself they didn't really mean it. Because to graciously accept those compliments means I have to shift my perspective of myself to see myself the way that they do. 

Yeah - and there we are back at the crux of it. Same shit issue. Growing up, society, my friends, my family told me I was smart - alot Even rewarded and reinforced that over and over and over. Somehow they NEVER got around to telling me that I was also beautiful though. If I apply the same logic as before, I am not Gabrielle Union beautiful, but I am not the Elephant Man either. So why does one thought bring me comfort and the other just kinda make me cringe? 

Because in order to see myself as beautiful, I have to let go. Let go of every airbrushed perfect woman's body that has ever been held up to me as the ideal. Let go of my mom's voice in my head telling me how that one cookie will make me fat. Let go of the hurt from any lover who has moved on to someone thinner, younger, more beautiful (and generally stupid as a box of rocks). Let go of my own shortsighted story/vision of myself.

Bc let's face it, I am too smart to believe that shit any longer. Backed into the corner by my own logic. How amusing.


The point of this piece is NOT to have people respond by assuring me that I am beautiful. That would be embarrassing, wrong, and kinda self-serving. The point IS to make you begin to look at those compliments that you accept easily about yourself and those that you do not. And to begin to move toward a place of embracing those things you have previously shut out and begin to tell a different story about who YOU are.