Life is short. Shorter than we think or want to believe, more often than not. And still, we waste a lot of it.
I spent a good portion of my early adult life worried about the wrong things. About whether I was “cool.” If I liked the right music, wore the right clothes, projected the pitch-perfect air of impenetrable, aloof knowingness. I was, in all honesty, kind of good at that for a while, and I somehow believed being good at that actually mattered. This was back in my 20s of course, when a lot of things seemed weighted with meaning and significance that weren’t.
Then, later, I worried endlessly about what people thought about what kind of mom I was, because just being “good” wasn’t good enough — noooo, of course not. I had to be better than merely good, because being merely good was tantamount to being a failure, right?
Did they see into my marriage, into what it really was? How long could I conceal that for? Months? Years? Could I?
All of this ridiculous worrying and fretting about What People Thought. For years. Decades. I now realize that’s what it was at bottom, to my deep shame. It didn’t matter what the truth was, or how sad I was. Seeming was as good as being, and I instinctively knew I needed to keep up appearances.
Or what? I didn’t know what the consequences were. But the threat felt real. Would I be unmasked as the imperfect person I really was? What would happen if everyone saw me, flaws and failings and all? Would that be the end of everything? BOOM, The End?
It wasn’t. It isn’t. I am stronger now than before. And I know better now than before.
Let them believe whatever they want – believing isn’t the same as knowing. I know who I am, you know who you are, and what They don’t know could fill several Russian novel’s worth of pages.
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
Life is short. Grab at that brass ring of happiness every goddamn chance you get. And fuck what They – and I mean any and all of them – think.
