So, my husband says to me, during one of those characteristically emo times in my life when I’m really struggling with something:
“Hey, do you like yourself?”
It catches me up short, because I’m not sure how to answer. There’s the immediate response that rises into my consciousness, which is “Mostly, yes!” and then there is all the second guessing that goes on beneath that because I was certainly not raised to like myself, you know. So I go with the first answer. I nod and clutch my sodden Kleenex to my nose and look up at him through tear soaked lashes. “Mostly, yes.” I say, hiccoughing.
“So why do you give a flying fuck whether anyone else likes you or not? And honestly, why, when you have so many people who *do* like you, do you focus on the ones that don’t?”
My husband, the Zen Master. You know? He slays me.
The conversation continued because I was working out some shitty ass shit over feeling guilty about not liking someone.
“I hate not being a nice person and I hate being judgemental and I hate that I don’t want to try anymore.”
He said something along the lines of “You’re weird. If I don’t like someone, I just don’t like them. It isn’t an issue. I don’t agonize over it. I just. plain. don’t. like them.”
“So, it’s not judgemental or mean or bitchy to dislike someone?”
“It’s human. You like who you like. You don’t like who you don’t like. You don’t owe anyone an apology for not liking them.”
Oh.
So, there’s this gentle silence during which he is smiling tenderly at his wife. It’s one of those moments you wish you had a picture of because I want to see that face *every time I’m struggling with something*. It is the face of love.
“Why do you think you struggle so much with this?” He asks, when he’s judged that enough time has gone by.
“Because I was so utterly rejected in my childhood that now, if people like me I feel priviledged. I feel like they’re giving me a gift. Like a pity fuck only without the fucking.”
He nods.
“And when I realize I don’t really like someone, I feel certain it must be because I am somehow deficient. It must been that my character is flawed, or I’m a bitch, or I’m too quick to judge.”
He nods some more. “So, it can’t just be that you are liked by the people that like you because you’re likeable? And you can’t just dislike someone because your instincts tell you that person is a douche canoe?”
Laughter. Lots of it.
“You get to choose.” He says, leaning forward to wipe snot from beneath my nose. “You get to say “I want this person in my life or I don’t. You don’t have to like everybody and it isn’t a tragedy. Not everyone has to like you and it isn’t the end of the world.”
And then he takes me out to lunch.
I find myself acutely aware these days that I’m married to a fricken genius.
The Sultan of Swing