As far as social blunders go I’m pretty much up there with Frank Spencer, Boris Johnson and that bloke from Something from the Weekend who always breaks the gadgets and seems to think mumbling words with no inflection whatsoever makes for good TV (which somehow it does, I hate that). I often feel like I’m a walking disaster area, going through life from one banana skin to the next just waiting to crash to the floor, take out a priceless vase on my way down and break something really embarrassing (like my ass bone) in the process.
But I don’t think I’m that different to most people. We’re all socially awkward in our own way, the difference with me being I obsess over it. I’ll do or say something I later consider stupid, then allow it to roll around in my mind over and over, until it has snowballed into this massive thought knocking out all other thoughts that threaten to get in its way.
After my teenage years when I felt like nothing I ever did was cool or right, and more sleepless nights than I can remember obsessing about how crap I was, I started to censor myself to avoid as much social embarrassment as I could. Over the years I thought I was delicately honing this personality that didn’t come out of the toilet with her knickers stuck in her tights, never had home hair colouring disasters and always knew the right thing to say. In short, I tried to become a cool, sophisticated, breezy person a million miles away from who I felt inside. I don’t think I ever actually achieved that persona, but it helped to have something to aim for.
But the fact is, you can only censor yourself so much. And now that I’m a grown woman, not a shaking wreck of a fifteen year old, I can finally, finally give myself a break. Because I now know that I’m not the only person that gets it wrong sometimes, and worries about it. There are millions and millions of us out there, feeling insecure, wishing we could go back and change some small inconsequential thing that we’ve done. So we might say or do the wrong things and want to kick ourselves in the head but that person that you are thinking you said the wrong thing to? They are probably kicking themselves in their head about something they said or did to you that you didn’t even notice. And if they’re not, well good for them. But growing up has taught me that those of us who do obsess and worry can comfort ourselves in the knowledge that it’s not because we’re crap, it’s because we care.
I can be a bitch sometimes, like everyone else. But it doesn’t happen often because I have an unquenchable thirst to please people, making people happy is what I like to do best in the whole world, and I think that’s true for most people. There was an article in this months Glamour magazine saying that we should all be complimenting each other more, because it makes us feel good. Erm, hello? This is not news to me. I love to praise people, because I know only too well how hard it can be if you are an over thinker, and I don’t want to give anyone any more cause to obsess and worry than their own brain already does for them. It’s not about being dishonest, it’s about seeing the good in someone, in something and everything, and telling them how really good that thing is.
I don’t want to go through life simply not upsetting people, I want to go through life making people feel great and helping them see how utterly brilliant they are. Maybe that’s not my job but I do it anyway. Always look for, and point out, the best of everyone and everything. It’s just a shame that sometimes my own mind won’t let me praise myself. But maybe that’s my pay off. And I’m hoping that if I can see the best in others, they might, just might, be seeing the best in me too (and not notice, or at least not mention, that I’ve got toilet paper stuck to my foot).
