High School Healing

So I went to my 30th high school reunion this weekend with my BFF Bianca Babesberg. I love her so much but over the years she’s also represented a bit of a thorn in my ego paw. Not her fault, she’s doing her. But she seems to be doing it so damn well, and so damn successfully and happily, while looking smoking hot all the time btw, that it’s tough to stand in the shadow of that, or even near it — and I am clear that I am the person making the shadow, doing the comparison rather than co-existence thing, with this person who I love and who loves me and who doesn’t do what she does to make me feel shitty, whose life is not about me, really at all, but rather includes me, or can include me, if I let it.

And Bianca isn’t the only friend I have this thing with, I’ve noticed. There’s an ex-boyfriend who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for writing (how could he do that to me?), another close friend who is an influential and famous political activist I admire, and of course other close family members and friends who are having careers and making things happen in the world in ways that, to be blunt about it, make me jealous I’m not doing what they do or being as cool in some way as they are: Scientists, musicians, filmmakers, business peeps, entrepreneurs, poets, bakers, moguls, fermenters.

I’m okay being me, I don’t want to be them, but on the whole I’d like to be, just, well, maybe a little more something than I feel I am. In the presence of their awesomeness, I historically feel less awesome. 

So, one solution is to stay away from those people, those people who have what part of me wants, but for whatever reason isn’t doing what it takes to get it. Stay away, stay with my kind, my one-day-at-a-timers, my stay-at-home-mom’ers, my yoga tribe, the seeking seekers, the closeted artists, the holders of the emotional wounds whose daily life is healing-centered rather than productivity-centered. Stay in my comfort zone and avoid the triggers, like the Goop store (Why aren’t I Gwyneth?) or the Tesla dealership (I should have been more like Elon!) or music festivals (If only I’d stuck with those guitar lessons ...), or, or, or, or.

OR I could, once again, return to center, remember that we humans are all, all, walking a windy path, having our human experiences, and I’m having this one, and I’m grateful for it. 

I could remember all that. And I could feel, in the presence of my longtime friends who are so interesting, fun, and accomplished in so many different ways, who I admire and adore — for who they are, who they’ve always been, beyond and beneath all their achievements, I could feel grateful for these friendships. I could feel grateful for these people in my life, who’ve stuck around despite my projecting my own self-doubts and self-loathing on to them. Who don’t see me as pitiful or lesser in any way but as me, doing me, successfully and happily these days. And looking good doing it, if I do say so myself. And I do. I love my life. I’m gonna keep going.

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