Finally found what I wanted to say…

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. I kept trying to blog about it but couldn’t find the words. I kept finding myself writing then rewriting what I wanted to say so I would finally just stop.

I think maybe I have finally figured out what I wanted to say.

I am an exceptional woman. Now, wait. Hear me out. I am just really discovering the value of myself, something I have struggled with for years. I talk a good game and I have become very certain about my value as a director and as a writer but until recently, I haven’t been able to place that value on Susan, the woman. Susan, the woman, didn’t have an identity three years ago. Susan, the woman, almost died one night because she didn’t know who she was supposed to be to make everybody happy. She didn’t know that the one person she had to make happy was herself in order to make everybody else happy.

Even with making my own life this past year and a half, I still have struggled with finding out who Susan, the woman, is. Sometimes, I can see her very clearly and very distinctly. I like what she looks like. She wears very cool clothes and incredible boots. Jeans, usually, but something about the outfit is confident and sexy and feminine. That’s the person I want to see looking back at me. An exceptional woman.

Usually, I see the 30 lbs. at least that I need to lose. I see the frizzy ends of my hair. I see the deep lines around my eyes that give away my age. I see the calloused and cracked and unattractive feet. I see the wounds around the edges that have been inflicted by years of neglect and denial. I see the sadness and the doubt and the confusion. I rarely see the exceptional woman in the cool clothes with the incredible boots.

And I try to superimpose an idea of the exceptional woman that is not true over the insecure, fearful and timid woman that I feel I am most of the time. I realize this the most when I’m dealing with a man who I have strong feelings for. I try to figure out which type of exceptional woman he would be drawn to – young, thin, blond, perky, young, thin, redhead, flirty – and I find myself seriously lacking in that kind of exceptional. Then begins the process of devaluation. I am not worth anything because I am not 25 years old. No wonder he’s not able to see me as date-able. I’m not 25, 110 lbs. and flirty. I’m past my prime, I should just give up and go sit in the corner and wear baggy shirts and comfy jeans and realize that I am not exceptional in the way that I think he thinks I should be.

Yet, as I’ve begun to discover and accept recently, I am never more attractive and never more exceptional than when I am just me, whatever that means. I struggle with accepting that because I accepted previously that being just me wasn’t enough. My relationship with this man is never better than it is when I am just me. Doesn’t matter which me I am. His eyes reflect his affection for me when I just get out of my own way, quit trying to figure out who I’m supposed to be and just be me. Wow. So simple. And it’s when our friendship and our relationship is at its best. I should know this by now, you’d think. But, again, I never accepted that just me is enough.

Because just me is complicated. I never thought complicated could mean exceptional. I always thought exceptional was singularly perfect, without complications, without variety. Exceptional was one single type of perfect. A standard that I could never live up to because I accepted the fact that I was imperfect and valueless and complicated.

But I am beginning to understand that my complications, my complexities, my seeking and struggling and fighting and crying and wounds and sorrow and joy and laughter and all that depth of feelings and emotions is exactly what makes me exceptional. I FEEL. Without those feelings, without those complexities, exceptional doesn’t exist. It exists because of them. Anger drives the exceptional. Fear drives the exceptional. Emotion drives the exceptional. Passion drives the exceptional.

That cold, surface, plastic, presentable face that I see all around me, that I thought was my “competition,” what I had to live up to, is nothing but emptiness and the ordinary and the unexceptional. So she’s 25. When you’re ready to deal with a real woman, a real person, a real exceptional human being who can be so much more than just a face and a body and eye candy, then you come talk to me. When you’re ready to deal with your own feelings, your own foibles, your own demons, you come talk to me. When you’re ready to be exceptional, you come talk to me.

Even as I take very tiny little cautious baby steps towards someone new, I can feel the questioning begin – who do I have to be for him to love me? And I heard the answer loud and clear the other day as this thought was lingering around the edges.

I have to be Susan, the woman. Flawed, fallible, complicated, complex, exceptional me. And I wasn’t afraid anymore.