I have a secret. Promise you wont tell?
Here it goes:
I'M NOT PERFECT.
Did you fall off your chair?
Well, dust yourself off, plop yourself back on your comfy chair, and let me tell you a little bit more.
I'm going to go wa-ay back to my childhood, and remind you that as a nice Catholic Latina girl with a mom that was, well of course, the Latina version of June Cleaver, my three siblings and myself, were the idyllic version of perfection.
We spoke when spoken to, were courteous, spoke a language befitting of the well-healed family we were, and were just the picture. perfect. family. (Go ahead, throw up a little in your mouth).
Growing up, I had my moments, but outside of the home no one could see it. Going to school was the same. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
Career wise? PR seems to be the drug of choice for folks that dabble in the OCD realm. No matter how hot the kitchen got, no one was to see you sweat. You were, I was, trained and poised to be the perfect PR pro. Dressed in event black at all times, perfect hair, perfect non-makeup makeup, everything I did was on-point. Even when reporters were screaming at me, or a client called me in the middle of a funeral (true story).
No one was to see me sweat.
My team, when I had a team, knew my MO: Never let anyone see you sweat. Don't be frazzled. Compose yourself. Be perfection.
But, as ya'll know the story, PR is a thing of the past. Perfection is a hard role to keep, and eventually I let my guard down.
It started with baby steps. My husband, and thats probably a major reason why he is my husband, saw me loose it. I don't remember when exactly, but I do know that one of the many reasons he went from Friday night entertainment to my now husband, is that he didn't get scared when he saw me coming undone.
The layers, the many multicolored layers, were stripped away in the comfort of my bare and naked soul in front of the man who did nothing more than hold me.
With friends it's a bit harder. I'm the strong one. Composed. Quick on my feet; and always, without a question of a doubt, on it.
I tend to hide and retreat into the comfy confines of what I call my velvet lined box, which is my home, when I feel I'm about to come undone. When I don't have an answer, when I'm doubting myself, or when I simply don't know what to do, I hide.
So, if I trust anyone to the point where I bare my naked soul and show off my ugly stuff, and they're still around just holding me - we're friends for life.
But if you do, they do, what I am afraid the world will do to me, which is in essence use that very real "moment" to point a finger at me for not being perfect and on-point all the time, you have lost me. They have lost me.
Period.
