No Longer Anhedonistic
Jerred, my sorta-mishpucha sorta-friend who lives down in Battery Park, was available for drinks after work yesterday, and since I got out early for once (7:30) I was obligated to call. Sorta-Mishpucha takes precedence even over dates. Blood, water, you get the analogy.
His girlfriend was busy working until 8:30, so we had about an hours worth of guy time before she showed up, only to start kvetching about how late she'd had to work. Plaintiff's attorneys. Ha. Always complaining.
Over the course of the conversation, Jerred asked me a very poignant conversation. Having seen the photos on this site, and having heard through the family about various girls that I've dated, and their near universal quality of great beauty, he was wondering how it was that I became the most confident person he ever met.
My first reaction was that I'm not. But on reconsideration, I realized that I've come so far since I first imagined myself as a shy person, that it brooked more thought.
What's given me confidence? It hasn't been the women I've dated - at least three of them have told me, and I couldn't make this up, that I was "not attractive so much as attractive to [girlfriend]." This is not the stuff of which confidence is made. This is the stuff of which codependence is made. And I'm pretty sure that the women who said that were trying to get me there.
It wasn't my parents, although they've always been pretty great. They're parents. Even if they hand you things on a silver platter, the things they hand you aren't good enough, because you didn't earn them yourself. Doesn't build confidence unless you're one of the truly, obscenely pretentious types who believe that the world owes them something based on their birthright. Reminder: the world owes you nothing. Your parents owe you nothing. Anything given but unearned doesn't help you, per se, gain confidence. Rather, it forces you to become dependant. Best intentions, road to hell, you know what I'm preachin' here.
It wasn't my law school. Bertie is there now. She'll verify for me, over time, how little law school helps build your character.
Truly, there are three points in my life that I can think of that helped my confidence blossom.
The first, ironically, happened days after a breakup many years ago. I'd been living with my girlfriend quite miserably, and then my grandmother died, and I was unemployed. I got back from the funeral, and was summarily dumped. These things happen, and I'm sure it was for the best. Of course, at the same time I was dumped, I'd just come back from South Beach with a new, hot wardrobe. No more pleated pants. No more pre-cool Lower East Side clothes. No more shirts that hung off me like loose skin off of John Poppers arms. Suddenly, I was single, well dressed, free of the problems my grandmother's deteriorating life was causing my parents, and happy. While my Grandmother's death was sad, it was one of those "the pain will finally be over" mercies that you sometimes ask God for, even if you don't believe in him.
Unemployment ended shortly afterwards. I got a job over at Tribal DDB where I would meet Dori and a handful of others, and go from not having ever held a steady job to lead developer in the span of an interview. Suddenly, my salary was triple of the Ex's, and life was good. This all capped off with a weekend job at a trendy downtown boutique where I learned to get over my beautyphobia.
By the end of the summer, I had drinks with a dear friend who remarked, offhandedly, that I was looking very sexy. Coming from her, it meant a lot. I'd finally started to come into my own. That was step one of three.
Step two was an offhand comment by Dakota, after going on several particularly bad dates with several women whom I didn't really click with, but who tried to go home with me anyway. This included the Israeli girl with the made-up name, the former MTV producer with the eight year old, the photographer with the great boots but the gigantic nose, and countless others. I had a few good dates that ended up going nowhere after the first one, and several bad dates called me back. In a fit of despair, I proposed to Dakota that I go gay, or just date ugly women, assuming that they'd be less trouble. Dakota responded "Why settle?"
That one hit me like a ton of bricks. It summed up where I'd been my entire life - camp instead of getting a job, going to law school instead of getting a job, waiting for women to kiss me instead of kissing them (something I still revert to to this day), waiting for women to ask me out instead of pursuing the women I'm interested in, the list stretched behind me like an insane funhouse mirror. I kept settling for things instead of finding what I wanted, determining how to get it, and getting it.
After all, just sitting on my laurels allowed me to date Michelle and Meghanand even to have an opportunity like the I Fall Hard one. There was some niggling concern at the back of my head that if I was too aggressive, I'd throw off my karma or some such, and such things wouldn't enter my life anymore. What I realized was that I'd settled for the women who told me that they loved me, rather than assessing my own feelings. I'd settled for law school rather than a job because, heck, in the worst case scenario, I ended up a lawyer. I'd settled for camp because it was always there, and they took care of me, and I'd made a very few lasting friendships there, but still, I'd made a few. But really, why settle? At that point, I stopped settling for things in my life, and started to go after whatever struck my fancy.
Not, mind you, with any plan in mind. Just, whatever struck my fancy. That's how Marissa happened. That's how Ericka happened. That's how my job in Brooklyn and much of my post September 11 life happened - I was interested in going after what I saw with no real plan in mind, but in being aggressive.
There's a line between aggressive and confident. I was on the wrong side of that line, but the right side between introvert and extrovert.
The third and final step came in January and Febraury of this year. I was talking to a friend of mine on several occassions, and she said some things that, upon ruminating on them, both made sense and revolutionized my outlook.
I agreed to go on a blind date with one of my readers. I met her, and we were talking over several drinks, and she told me several things about herself that no one had ever said in as many words, and really, that's what ripped the lid off. What she said made me realize that even what I'd been doing wasn't enough, I was about halfway there, but I hadn't fully grasped my own potential.
I never used to believe in fate. I do now.
What she told me, and what I took into my head, played with, and have since adopted as my own, follows.
1) I can walk away from anything if it gets bad. Learning to do this gave me the ability to walk away from a bad job for a better one, in spite of my promising my old boss I'd be there longer. It allowed me to walk out of bad dates. It allows me to not call the girl I most want to call. You have to always be able to just walk away. Because otherwise, someone else has power over you that they will, inevitably, misuse.
2) Why be unhappy? This was the hardest one to come to grips with. After all, I'm a Russian Jew by heritage, which means that the glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's cracked and draining. But when I realized that it didn't have to be that way, I took a good long look at my life, decided what made me happy and what didn't, and effectively excised the things that made me unhappy. The toxic friends, the lack of exercise, the lousy diet, the sleeping all day on weekends, the drinking habit. Gone. Suddenly, I found myself smiling a lot. I found myself grinning. Just being generally happy. This was a revelation.
3) She told me I was great but troubled. This one was intensely personal, but based on the friends she's got that I categorize in the amazing category, it was a big enough compliment to stop me in my tracks.
4) "I don't get embarassed." This one was harder to acheive, and I'm not fully there yet, but as long as I keep my wits about me no matter what I do, it's very difficult to become embarassed. If I do something stupid, I simply own up to it. If someone else has a problem with it, we either deal with it, or go in different directions. It happens. This frees me up to do many of the things I've always wanted to do.
I learned to take life in big gulps. That exercise is more than just lifting heavy chunks of metal only to put them back down on the floor. That rollerblading through Manhattan is simultaneously extremely dangerous and totally thrilling. That if I want it, only I can make it happen.
That's how I became confident, in that last sentence right there. It became almost a mantra.
If I want it, only I can make it happen.
Posted by Swerdloff at August 28, 2002 08:55 AM
