“There is nothing known as “Perfect”. It’s only those imperfections which we choose not to see!!” Albert Einstein
I am not sure when it began to hit me that I was not only different from everyone else around me, but it often brought up feelings of insecurity, as in not being as good as another. Shit, it could have been anything from height, to having a voice that refused to change, even waiting for hair under my arms.
When I was a young kid, I did feel different from my friends. I had this knack for being popular, in spite of a butt load of imperfections. I didn’t know what it was then and I don’t know what it is now.
Those early differences were really kind of inconsequential, until my father died when I was nine. I will never forget that night of his death, alone in the dark in my bedroom. In a way, my mind abruptly woke up, inflamed by the shriek of my mother, left there alone for what seemed like an eternity to a little kid.
Everything changed with that very first breath of fear. When I walked into the classroom, the first time after, everyone turned to each other and whispered what they had all found out, waiting for me to appear. In some ways, that is what started me on a lifelong journey of introspection.
I was a pretty bright kid, but I was at the bottom of the top, which cut two ways for me. Sure, I was pissed that the geeks in my class could get 100’s, without opening a book. It was funny, how it allowed me to still be one of them, but closer to the rest of the kids. To make matters more awkward, I skipped a grade, so the “average” normal ones were nearly a year older than me, going through high school.
I was an incredibly shitty athlete through out my growing up, chosen last, regardless of sport. I am not sure when feeling awkward became my normal, but I’ll be damned, I got away with it. I was even president of my high school fraternity, if you can believe that. The awkwardness has stayed with me forever. I often joke, at my own expense, that I have no business being in the physical world, because even unscrewing a bottle cap is an accomplishment, til this day. It certainly fed my self-consciousness. Oh yeah, I can’t dance to save my ass. I used to pray for slow dances, because all I had to do was walk, while feeling her entire front, a pubescent redemption of sorts.
I think I may have gone to sleep, entering my twenties, consumed by what was expected of me, while growing estranged from myself, like living someone else’s life, being my own, hand-tailored imposter. I was failing at life, whatever the fuck that meant. I was in trouble and I turned to therapy, which I always thought was for crazy people, certainly not me.
My world exploded and none of the age old, rabbit-in-the-hat tricks worked any more. I was looking life squarely in the face, flat-footed, kicked in the nuts, with none of the age old defenses worth a shit. Crazy was the only explanation that worked for me and thus began a ten-year journey, deep, deep, inside myself.
In therapy, I gave voice to the secrets I was clinging to in silence. In the beginning of this emotional two-step, every utterance felt revelatory. I was in my early thirties, my marriage had imploded in a tragic and ugly scenario. I was feeling righteous. It was in the infancy of the Stars Wars revolution. I naively believed the Force was with me. My light saber farted. I lost a custody battle. I was dying on my boys, just like my father died on me.
Therapy didn’t save my life, it connected me to the life I have been breathing ever since. Group therapy was part of the emotional repair job. I will never forget when I walked into group for the first time and saw her. She was dressed in a flowing, white cotton dress. She wore open shoes, with straps of leather criss-crossing her perfect legs, inches below her knees. I had never been in a room with a woman so stunning and statuesque.
One of the rules in group was that outside relationships were immediate grounds for emotional excommunication. After what seemed like an eternity, I worked up the courage to ask her out. I could not think of a more magnificent way to get drummed out of the corp, and I was.
Whenever we went anywhere at all, I was uncomfortably, self-conscious, because all eyes were magnetized on her mere presence. Why do I tell you this? I learned early on this perfect woman was incredibly insecure about her looks. I was with her through at least one facelift and other cosmetic surgeries. Very simply, she was terrified of looking like her mother.
It helped me learn, in the most painful way imaginable, that perfect is a fucken illusion. Absolutely none of us are immune from feeling awkward, unworthy, along with every conceivable challenge to our sense of self-worth. It is what all of us have in common, whether we choose to ignore it, deny it or best it.
In my quest for answers, I met the Buddha, hitching a ride on life’s highway. We struck up a friendship. I don’t know why he put up with me and I still don’t. According to him, as best I can understand, everyone goddamn one of us is perfectly imperfect, equal beings in the humanhood.
It saddens me that so many of us look outside ourselves for persons of perfection, a stone cold, fucken myth if ever there was one. I can’t imagine the cancerous insecurities that keep the Kardashians engorging themselves on themselves. If any of you think they are happier than you are, I can get you a tax free deal on an exclusive purchase of the Brooklyn Bridge.
I hope you can forgive me these occasional diatribes, but the actuarial charts are biting me in the ass, staring right into the cold-blooded eyes of my greatest imperfection, my mortality. I wish it could force all of us to recalibrate the choices we make as individuals and countries.
Can I have this dance? It’s a slow one.
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You wanna listen?