An accidental dose of claritin.

There are moments in your life when your brain becomes bombarded and beaten to a pulp (and I’m not talking about my migraine that is always slightly ahead in this epic battle between it and my bottle of Exedrin) with thoughts of insane inadequacy.

I think we all like to picture ourselves to be a certain way. There’s the cookie-cutter white high school chick, skinny as a tooth-pick, dressed in a triple-0 abercrombie miniskirt with a pair of uggs (because god-forbid it’s all of 50 degrees outside). She’s the Quinne Fabray of her school, deeply part of the crowd that is always on the starting end of the slushy massacre, never the receiving end. She has perfect locks, the perfect body, reputation, and boyfriend (quarterback of the football team, of course). There’s the “musician”- the introspective and earthy mix of dark gloom and soulful insight. She can bring a roomful of open ears to humility with the perfect pitch of sadness and celebration, with a chord that is just right to conjure up a wordless message. The musician enjoys walking around with a guitar case slung on her shoulder because it’s what identifies her. It’s what sets her apart and brings color to what is otherwise just another run of the mill face in the crowd. Then we have the sunglass-wearing, gum-chewing, hand slugged on belt policeman. He wields his baton with pride, as it embodies his authority and power, and well, sadly in some cases, his very manhood. It’s what allows him to stand above the driver he’s just pulled over with a cocky slouch and a tone in his voice that could border on rude, and use harsh imperatives to respectable individuals with respectable families and jobs.

But what you don’t see is that little miss Quinn Fabray actually has no idea who she is. She becomes pregnant, loses all golden standings with her then-inferiors, and finds herself in the pits of high school hierarchy. In the privates of her bedroom, she is just a lonely girl who was simply more successful in obscuring the glow of insecurity and doubt than the other girls. The musician – she’s lost her smoky eyeshadow palette and finds herself heading desperately to sephora to buy another. She’s not quite the musician without it, and lately, all the chord structures she’s been using in her songs seem the same. She actually has no idea what her own lyrics even mean. And well, we all know that the policeman lives with a dominatrix wife.

Usually, we can shield ourselves from brute reality. Some people go on astonishingly well, in fact, under the illusion of who they believe themselves to be (we’ve all met that one huge douchebag who no one can figure out how he doesn’t realize just how douchey his white sunglasses really are). But sometimes, in a moment of sinus-clearing clarity, we realize that we fall short of that person- that person we’ve so meticulously painted ourselves to be.

I’ve had such a moment today. It’s humbling and shattering all at once. It leaves you feeling wounded, from a blow to pride maybe, and from the initial sting of it all. I don’t aspire to be perfect. I’m no Jesus. But I do hold certain standards and expectations for myself. I believe myself to be a certain type of person, a type that qualifies me to be “good enough” in my books and allows me to hold a level of esteem and respectability. But do we ever stop and ask ourselves… what if we’re not that person? What if, when put to the test, we’re forced to throw off our safety cloak of illusion and bare what lies underneath. What if we don’t recognize what we see, then?

What then?

 

 

Side note. My housemate’s new puppy is barking like a mother fucker upstairs and I kinda really wanna kick it right now…