Have you ever had a person say something to you jokingly, and it’s kind of mean, but funny? And you let it slide like a boss, because you know how to laugh at yourself? But years later you still think about it every once in a while?
I remember a long time ago, I was wearing a black bathing suit with a ruffled bikini bottom, thinking I looked kind of French and edgy. My friend Val said (in a British accent which always makes it more cutting), “Oh, Mazza, you look like one of the dancing hippos in Fantasia.” I think of it every time I consider wearing something with a ruff…
Yesterday, someone told me I was “touchy” and that talking to me was like navigating verbal eggshells. It’s been quite a week for pealing the onion of my behavior… I did what I always do in response to criticism. I took it in. “This is a first. No one has ever accused me of being thin skinned before,” I said.
The exchange above is a blip on the screen, but the fact is I AM NOT TOUCHY.
Pealing the Onion…
I do not think you can be thin skinned in recovery. We all face our past, in ways those who are not addicted to Toasted Head, never have to do. We make fearless moral inventories and atone, for God’s sake.
I have been contacted by old lovers, nannies and the mothers of my children’s friends in the process of writing this blog.. Some of these long-lost reminiscers have told me straight-up, they “hated me” in my drinking days. Reminding me of previous slights and “the time I didn’t seem sad when their cat was run over by a town car…”
I have had internet trolls call me a “stupid cunt” in reference to my yearning prose. They tell me my writing is banal and my ideas the worse kind of tripe. I have braved Reddit. I swear to you, I carry my mistakes in my pocket like a doctor’s excuse…
And most days I just get up and go about my business like a pachyderm.
But I never, ever wear anything with ruffles…
http://https://youtu.be/nEjPDS8Jp1E
