I’ll keep throwing the skeletons in my closet at you, any chance you’ll let me and even those you won’t. There’s a lot of them. Lately I’ve been ending sentences with phrases like so… or you know, right? Or but anyway…and trailing off like I’m saying something you probably aren’t going to listen to anyway. You won’t, will you?
But then you did. And you questioned me on it. Made me figure out me a little bit more. Realize that sometimes throwing my skeletons out in the street isn’t necessarily the best way to handle them. Perhaps I need to dance with them. Ask them their secrets. Find out why they are staying here. And then send them away for good. Perhaps that’s better, but what would I know? I’ve been dancing with the devil for years, what’s so different now?
Everything. Everything is different.
I am learning.
Even when I think I am better, I realize there are parts of me that are not. Just so you know there may always be a little part of me that is afraid that I am not good enough for you. It’s the one thing I’ve heard in my whole life. My father’s only been dead a year.
In some ways it feels like forever. In others, it feels like yesterday. In both cases, I wish to put that part of my past as firmly in the past as I can. But I am learning that in order to do so, I might have to stop and take a breath and stop justifying and proving my every move to people who already care about me. I’m not used to that. I don’t think of myself as someone to get jealous over or pay attention to. I’m the life of the party because I’m the funny one, and the fun one. I’ve never been the one everyone looked at because she was anything but the entertainment, or always the entertainer. I guess I am learning that, too.
Me and a bunch of old friends got together today for the first time in a long time. We’ve all moved. New houses, new locations, new significant others. Renovations. Life changes. But we shared drinks and laughs. We laughed more than I almost remembered was possible. We joked again. We watched football. We talked about old times, and making new memories. We talked about getting the band back together, and started planning it. We missed friends we lost. And toasted to them, too.
Funny thing is, you can see life for whatever it is right in front of you and you can talk about the past, but sometimes it takes someone else to call you out to keep you from repeating it. I was saying to my friend tonight that even though I lost all this weight, and I know that I did, I look down and my legs look the same and while I was not anorexic or anything, I could understand how someone could be. Because looking down at me, I saw the same legs I always saw, regardless of how much I weighed and I scared myself a little in that moment.
I spent the rest of the night between laughing those deep hard belly laughs that refill your soul, with questioning myself and if I’d ever be good enough. Was I now? I never felt like I was before. What changed? And what if, more likely than not, I am wrong and I am not good enough? I never feel like I am either good enough or not too much. Somehow I feel like I am the worst parts of both at the same time and that terrifies me. I know that people look up to me, and I want to be better for them but sometimes these self-doubts creep in and cast shadows on my thoughts that tell the skeletons in my closet it’s okay to come out and dance. Perhaps with your help, and thanks to you for showing me, I can simply ask them, “what keeps you here?” And finally close the door.
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