You Like Me

"I haven't had an orthodox career, and I've wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!"

-- Sally Field, accepting her Oscar for Places in the Heart.

Over the months I have painstakingly collected and lovingly displayed for all to see as generous a collection of plaudits, kudos and huzzahs as a man could ever hope to obtain.  These trophies on my mantlepiece are my pride and joy, tangible evidence that you like me, right now, you like me. 

You see, I am very insecure, sometimes crushingly so.  I never believe I'm good enough.  The voices in my head are loud, insistent and depressingly well-informed when it comes to my shortcomings, shy and understated when it comes to my strengths.  Those rare times when I sit back and really believe I done good, those voices pipe up to remind me that I just got lucky, that next time I'll fail and everyone will see me for the fraud I really am.

Insecurity isn't all bad.  It can be a great motivator, for by refusing to allow me to believe I'm good enough, it constantly goads me to get better.  It never allows me to rest on my laurels, or even rest at all.  It's pushed me higher than I ever expected to get, but then that's probably just my insecurity speaking, taking credit for whatever I've achieved, since of course I'm not good enough.

My insecurity leaves me hypersensitive to what others say about me.  Although seldom heard, thankfully, discouraging words can plunge me into a deep depression, my insecurity having depleted my reserves of esteem, leaving me defenseless with nothing to keep me afloat.  How I envy the thick-skinned!  And encouraging words, well encouraging words should be controlled substances for an insecure person, for at first they trigger this incredible rush of euphoria, completely silencing those nattering nabobs of negativity in my head, then allow me to settle into a sustained feeling of well-being, a feeling that must explain the smiles I often see on the faces of normal people, until my insecure voices roar back to life to remind that I'm really not that good, I'll never live up to those nice words, I'll just disappoint them, and the party's over.

For instance, in June last year, after I'd written of my admiration for Jane Austen, Alan Sullivan of Fresh Bilge wrote that I was a "modern Austen acolyte."  My first kudo!  It set off the euphoria/well-being/crash cycle, at the end of which I was left wondering how I could possibly live up his words, how long it would take him to realize his mistake and take them back.  For a week I was paralyzed, unable to write, worried that anything I wrote would trigger the inevitable backlash.

Then A.C. Douglas wrote of Outer Life:  "The writing is consistently literate, wryly intelligent, and not infrequently, screamingly funny."  I remember staring at the screen as I read those words, unable to believe what I was seeing.  After my euphoria/well-being/crash cycle ran its course, I was left with my insecure voice telling me I had to write "screamingly funny" every day or else everyone would leave.  Of course no one writes screamingly funny everyday.  Most days I don't even try and when I do try, I usually manage maybe a halfhearted chuckle.  But I was convinced that without screamingly funny I'd lose everything.

Behold my twisted insecure mind!  Ugly, isn't it?

I started to collect the nice words, worried that if I didn't they'd disappear, as if I'd dreamed them or something.  I posted them on my About page and would look at them from time to time, reminding myself that yes, I may be a loser but at least I'm not a complete loser.  But the words didn't disappear.  They kept coming.  In blog posts, emails and comments.  From people I've long admired, from people I'd never heard of, from people I now admire, from people I'll never know.  They kept coming.  And people who said nice things repeated them, confirming that they still read me, that the scales hadn't fallen from their eyes, that maybe I wasn't a fraud after all, that maybe I actually measured up, that maybe I was good enough.

I've never experienced anything like this in my life.  Such generosity of spirit, from complete strangers no less, sustained for so long, well it's completely overwhelmed me.  My old euphoria/well-being/crash cycle has broken down, stuck for good on the well-being part.  My insecure voices, ordinarily so influential, are now muted when I write.  They continue to cause their mischief elsewhere but, perhaps for the first time ever, I feel secure, deeply secure, about something I care deeply about. 

And I have you to thank for that.  All of you who took the time to write such nice things.  All of you who dropped a few kinds words in my comment box.  All of you who sent those encouraging emails.  All of you who keep coming back to Outer Life, reading what I write. 

Now I know exactly how Sally Field felt that night.

Thank you.

Comments

Your insights are stunningly perceptive though you write about the most ordinary things. This is one of the best blogs I've ever read - and I've only recently come across it!

[Safiyyah]

Hit the post button too quickly on the last one. :-)

[Happy Booker]

yes, you have indeed "done good." Blog on, Old Plum!

[mark]

Even the market agrees:
http://blogshares.com/blogs.php?blog=http://www.outerlife.com/

[Alan Sullivan]

I remember that Sally Field moment. For some inexplicable reason I was watching. And even I liked her. But it was a little bit pathetic.

I think the need to be liked is a national vice of Americans. And it gets them in trouble all the time. It's so much easier to be a curmudgeon, like that futures trader in London who yelled 'Sod off, swampy!' while hurling a file cabinet at some hapless Green.

But you know I like your writing, or I wouldn't be here.