Marrying George Clooney

be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.

– charles bukowski

that is a snippet. thank you richard, thank you hollye.

richard and i were talking this morning. we were talking about having confidence, which seems to be just like being involved in the stock market. some days you’re riding a wave, making a little dough … feeling a little less anxious. a bit less vulnerable. not so worried. and some days, my god, you don’t know whether to turn left or right. and yes, you are crashing. you are.

i am not a woman filled with great self-confidence. i wish i were. i wish that i could feel about my writing the way some feel about my writing. i wish i could honor myself. feel full just knowing i’m good at something.
that isn’t how i’m wired.
i’m wired to question and doubt everything. from my looks to my writing. is that good enough? smart enough? does that sentence make any sense? are those words stringing together… am i pretty? you know, typical low esteem issues.
and as richard and i were talking, we wondered out loud, where is the root? where does it come from? there’s the obvious, and then there’s the deep. the buried. for all of us who truly painfully doubt our own goodness, talent, uniqueness … existence … it seems to be so profoundly impenetrable. and the kicker – the real kicker – is no matter how many folks tell you how amazing or talented you are, how vibrant, joyous — you just don’t believe them. you say thank you, but you don’t believe them. you believe and gravitate toward the one’s who keep reminding you that you are not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, talented enough … they remind you how bad and fucked up and shitty, and … you buy it. they have to be right.

why? why do they have to be right? what makes them so smart? what makes them know? why is their keeping you small true? why?

i wonder, was i that emotionally damaged as a kid? did i not get any attention? i mean i know i got attention, but did i get attention only when i was bad? or sad, or troubled? was it that my mother wanted all the attention, so when some was poured on me, she had to come along and soil the experience? maybe. maybe. i think when you’re a kid you want your mother and/or father, one or both, to love you so much that you’re not aware that you’re sitting in the middle of a car wreck. you’re just happy to be in the car.
i have a friend who is gorgeous, absolutely stunningly gorgeous, like heart stopping beautiful, and yet when she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t see that. she sees gawky and awkward and braces on her teeth and being alone as a teenager, and no one encouraged her. her mom didn’t encourage her. so, she believed the bad. she believed she wasn’t enough, and that stuff is so hard to change. so hard to transform, because somewhere you always believe the bad. the good is too suspicious. so, no matter how physically beautiful she is, she still, to this day, sees someone else.

and so just as bukowski says:
be on the watch, the GODS will offer you chances…

i’m beginning to think that the folks who are not kind and generous and loving are the one’s who offer you the biggest chances, the greatest opportunities, the most life changing because they’re the one’s who seem to thrive, truly thrive, while standing in our way. they’re the one’s who seem to stand in the dark with flashlights illuminating how little we think about ourselves. remind us over and over how much we don’t like ourselves. those are extraordinary gods.

you know, the everyday bus stop gods.

those are the gods that bukowski talks about. maybe when we stop thinking gods are untouchable, unreachable… the ones we pray to, and send prayers to hoping beyond hope they will answer our prayers … maybe when we realize that they in fact walk among us, that they are us… maybe that’s when, as bukowski says, we’ll know them and take them.

wouldn’t you like to be a barfly on the wall, just once?