Self Esteem

It’s occurred to me that the reason I have so much trouble blogging – I mean getting the stuff posted – is not that I have no ideas, or no time (although this does play into it). The reason is that I’m so unsure of myself. I read other people’s stuff and it always sounds so smart to me: Interesting, well thought out and clever. I put my own ideas together while I’m in the shower or out walking or driving in my car and it sounds kind of good in my head. But as soon as I start typing, and then re-reading, (this I do at the end of almost every paragraph!), I start to think of how it will sound from the reader’s perspective. And I start comparing it to what others have written.

Lately I’ve been downloading podcasts of This American Life, a wonderful radio show on NPR. The stories are compelling and narrated in such an intelligent way that I find myself longing to be the person who wrote this incredible stuff. Then, I try to do it the next time I write. But of course, if I sit here and try to sound like Ira Glass, I will fall flat on my face. He is a professional writer… or producer… or something. But he is a professional. I’m a professional mother. Not a professional writer. So how can my writing compare to this kind of writing. How can I compare? How can I indeed?

If Denise Civiletti can write a smart, informative column, so can I. If other North Fork Parents bloggers can write every other day, so can I. And if Ira Glass’s show can bring me to tears, well, shouldn’t I be able to do the same for my readers? I want to so badly, that I actually get in my own way.

I guess I’ve always been an insecure person. I realize that for as long as I can remember I have gauged myself and my accomplishments by what others think of me, and compared myself to what others were doing.

It started with Valerie from my kindergarten class. She had it all together for a 5-year-old: long brown hair in perfect, never-mussed pigtails. Always a new embroidered peasant shirt. But it was more of her attitude that I coveted. Valerie was aloof. She never seemed to care who her friends were or when she had a turn playing with the dress up clothes. And yet all the girls clambered to be by her side, and she seemed to get her turn anyway. I remember wishing I could be more like Valerie. Or at least be closer to her. Her sidekick was Nadine. (I can remember her name because she had the only other N-name in the class). Oh, how I came to envy Nadine. I’d try to talk to her and find out what it was like to play blocks with Valerie, how it felt to hold her hand while walking in line. My own piddling existence paled to either one of those girls’. My pattern of low self-esteem had begun.

In 6th grade, when my family moved from Queens to the preppy north shore suburbs, my self-esteem took a very hard hit. After Valerie, I’d had many happy years of feeling pretty good in comparison to my peers. I was an outgoing and smart child – a “leader” they’d write on my report card. And attending a parochial school afforded me the luxury of virtually no physical comparison: we wore uniforms.

Sixth grade was different, though. The moment I walked into my 6th grade school in that lovely suburb I noticed that all the girls were carrying little pocket books on their shoulders – Le Sport Sacs. Stupid little colored nylon bags with thick cloth seams. Absolutely everyone had them. All girls had at least one, some had many – different colors to match their outfits! This girl had none. Zero. I could hardly even imagine what an 11-year-old girl would need a pocket book for. Certainly not lip gloss. Or a hair brush. Very soon I realized that compared to all these pretty and well put-together girls, I was a bit sloppy and I didn’t have any of the right clothes or accessories. I craved my own Le Sport Sac and yoke neck sweaters.

Throughout adolescence and high school I compared myself to others. I tried to be like other kids, to fit in. Honors classes were dropped in order to fit into a certain clique I longed to be part of. I felt peer pressure to an extreme. I could hardly make a decision without first checking with my beloved girlfriends. For years I swung between being lonely and outcast to idolizing the girls in my circle. It was a crazy pattern and I was determined to break out of it.

Finally I left for college. Real college. Lecture halls and dorm rooms and unsupervised free time. I did a lot of experimenting in college. And a lot of learning. I was able to focus on my learning when I wanted to, and party when I didn’t. I figured I was pretty much my own person at that point, but the truth was that a lot of my decisions were informed by what my friends thought: “You’re almost 19! You can’t turn 19 and still be a virgin!!” My friends had to sing the lyrics from Billy Joel’s Only the Good Die Young, “…the Catholic girls start much too late” just once and I made my decision. It was going to be before my birthday.

My twenties yielded my most confident and self-assured time. I didn’t care what people thought and spoke my mind. I picked my own clothes and made my own choices. Later, though, after becoming a mother, I realized that my self-esteem was fragile. I quickly compared myself to what my mother had done when we were little, how my mother-in-law kept her home, and what it seemed all other mothers on the planet could do better than me: be calm, comfortable parents. I was sure that what I was doing was not right, if only because it seemed that everyone else was doing it better.

I had an epiphany this past weekend. I realized that the self-esteem issue still impacts my parenting. I’ve been a grown woman since just before my 19th birthday, remember, and a mother for the past 11 years. But somewhere deep inside me, I am still comparing myself to others, and still wondering what others are thinking about my parenting.

We were invited to celebrate the birthday party of a 100-year-old relative. He’s not a blood relative, but he is a sweet Irish man we call “paw” and has been in my family my whole life. I was really hoping my children would be respectful and maybe even want to celebrate this significant event. But to them it was a very long drive in dressy clothes to church and then a restaurant where they had to be quiet and have manners. As my middle child put it, “This is an old person party. I hate old person parties. They are so boring.!”

As soon as we arrived, this same child was upset by her brother and began to pout. She wrapped herself in one of the long window curtains and hid. I spent almost an hour trying to get her out of it – talking to her in private, having her brother and cousins apologize, offering food and soda (she doesn’t often drink soda). But none of this worked. In fact, it seemed to be getting worse. She told me she was hungry and then when I fixed her a plate, she said the food was “horrible” and that she didn’t like anything. She stomped away and began to kick the wall. Everyone was looking now, and that was when I lost my temper.

After grabbing her hand and “leading” my child outside, I completely let loose, verbally. And as the words were spewing from my mouth “Who do you think you are? You were disrespectful to me and to everyone! How dare you?!!” this is what I realized: The reason I was mad, the reason I was losing my temper was that I felt like a failure in the eyes of all the folks at this party. All my cousins and aunts and uncles, all the older folks, friends of the guest of honor, even this wizened 100-year old man, were watching me lose control of my young daughter. This was humiliating to me. I wasn’t at all thinking of her. I was thinking of me! Of what people would think of me and of how someone who was better at this mothering thing would have handled this situation!

I quickly realized that my family was not judging me at all. After my daughter and I had both calmed down a lot, and we were back inside the party, many people came to me to offer comfort and support – sometimes advice and jokes too, which were not well-received. But what I realized was that nobody “out there” had been watching me and thinking negative things. This was my family. They loved and supported me. And, they understood.

So, as it turns out, maybe my insecurity is self-perpetuated. At least in this one instance, no one was disparaging me. I wasn’t failing in anyone’s eyes. The lesson I’ve taken from this occasion is this: I need to accept myself for who I am. I am not flawless. I do not mother perfectly nor do I mother like anyone else. I also do not write faultlessly. I am not like any other writer, or blogger, no matter how much I think I want to be. I write the way I mother: Honestly. Imperfectly. And exactly like no-one but me.

That’s OK with me.

Eat your heart out, Valerie.

Check out This American Life: