I don’t think I’d have gotten this far in life without having a sense of humor about myself (and a selection of Tensor bandages and thousands of pots of coffee.)

When you’re prone to nerdish enthusiasms, intense klutziness, exuberant feelings about random things, and just enough social awkwardness to occasionally stun people into silence, you have to be fine with being the brunt of jokes… and more importantly, being the brunt of your own.

Here’s a quick list of talking points:

Doesn’t wear shoes/socks
Arms so short she can’t reach her hands
Overthinker
Verbal processor
Talks at the television (see above)
Reads the ends of books and plot spoilers
Doesn’t like talking on the phone
Lazy eye on the verge of narcolepsy
Potentially manic about Christmas
Built like snowperson
Never without handbag the size of an adolescent lamb
Is from Canada and says “aboot”
Is prone to self-injure in public
Cooks dinner until oddly late hours
Is snobby about groceries
Can’t drive
Prone to cry at commercials
Takes “from above” self-photos as though she were a Yeti and needed to be captured on film to prove her existence

… and really, there are many more. But I openly acknowledge these facets of the jewel I am. Huzzah!

If you want to watch me turn into a total spaz, however, get mad at me. Better yet, get mad and walk away. I’m not good at dealing with that.

Not in the sense that I need everyone to love me (I might, I might), but in the sense that I panic if I think I’ve offended someone and they’re not responding to me, or if they get overtly chilly in my direction, or they ramble passive aggressively about something that sounds like something I might have done. I rush in to try and make everything okay, or justify myself in some loopy way, or fuss about how I can compensate for whatever I did. Usually this pattern plays out in one of three ways:

1. They didn’t actually have a problem with me, and now I’m a lunatic
2. They did have a problem with me and I’M NOT MAKING IT BETTER
3. Silence

And silence upon silence? Chilly upon chilly? Well, nothing can go well from there. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Meg abhors unresolved tension.

I hate it, even if I’ve done something to earn it. And if I can’t figure out what the hell I did, I go berserk. Not at the person, mind you. Just at myself. Which makes me inevitably weird to the person. Which, again, makes it even worse.

Modern psychology has all sorts of advice about letting people feel their feelings and owning your choices and giving them the space to do what they have to do… but I’m a fixer. I want things to be fine. I want people to be fine. I used to think this was a good quality, when it’s more just… selfish.

My late Nonna used to say, “Shalom!” and make a little “CHILL OUT” gesture with her hands if a discussion in her house got too pointed or a debate got too lively. Sometimes it was a joke, but she really didn’t like conflict. And I’m different — I can deal with conflict in the midst of it. Sometimes I propel it, even. I’m a hell of a debater, and I’m never more articulate then when I’m royally pissed off.

I just don’t like to deal with the consequences.

After arguing with my husband the other night about something ridiculous — and doing my usual, “I’M SO SORRY I’M A HORRIBLE WIFE!” and asking him if he was fine about five minutes after I was ready to unscrew his head and throw it at him — it occurred to me that I was doing three (just three?) annoying things consistently:

1. Not trusting my family and friends to love me (mostly) unconditionally
2. Dodging the consequences of things I was responsible for by forcing “okay”
3. Putting people in the awkward position of reassuring me when I’d just annoyed the hell out of them

It took me until I was in a new city with a whole new group of friends, and a new husband who was going to have to put up with me… forever… to realize that my way of dealing with things was kind of kooky. It lacked patience, it lacked faith in my relationships, and it was making me squirrelly.

I’m still figuring it out.

I know that there ARE people who want to make you feel terrible if they’re angry at you, and put effort into it — I’ve had those friendships, and they’re exhausting. But they’re also a rare animal.

Most people want to feel how they feel, take a bit to get over it, and then move on. Or they’ll tell you what they need when they figure it out. Or they’ll yell, and then stop yelling. Or you’ll apologize, and they’ll accept or not. All you can really do is do better next time, and respect how they deal with their frustration.

But it doesn’t escape me that most of the big life lessons I’ve had since I became an adult amount to CALM DOWN or SHHHHHH.

Oh, and, I LOVE YOU, DOOFUS.

Let’s have a little chat about shoes.

I’m not known for being practical about shoes. Not at all.

I wear ballet flats and flip flops, both notorious for their utter lack of support and protective abilities.

In fact, I’d be barefoot most of the time, if someone was willing to walk ahead of me with, say, a yoga mat and a Costco-size vat of Purel.

But, in a rare moment of practicality a couple years back, I got Uggs.

Yep. Uggs.

Go ahead, laugh. My dad bought them for me (HE WANTED ME TO BE WARM) so he will likely cry (OR PUNCH YOU), but mock all you want… my toes go to sleep each night (or if I sit down too long in a weird position) knowing I’ve made them a priority.

It’s not like I’m doing this, people:

I’ve never worn them with:

shorts
a skirt
sweatpants
a miniskirt (who are we kidding?)
a sundress
short shorts (again, IT’S NOT LIKE I HATE YOUR EYES)
a bikini (now you’re just being foolish)
a panda costume (though I would… I would)

Nope, I’m all Kate Winslet in MY Uggs (sans watermark):

(I’m well aware I don’t look anything like Kate Winslet but MAYBE IN MY UGGS?!?)

Check it: warm coat. Warm pants. A scarf. Casual family erranding. She’s not trying to look stylish, but I don’t think she looks bad, either. SHE’S KATE FRIGGIN’ WINSLET, PEOPLE.

And she wears Uggs.

The most important consideration here is that Uggs keep my feet happy in the cool temperatures of New England (when we actually have them, and no, I don’t wear them unless we do)… AND they make me look like a cozy Eskimo (Inuit!) girl. Fun!

From where I stand, the primary argument against Uggs rests on the proposition that they’re not “stylish.”

“Ugg — that’s short for ugly!” WOW, NO ONE ELSE HAS EVER MADE THAT JOKE BEFORE. GOOD ONE.

And I’m not saying they look fantastic. But I think function, in this case, trumps form.

Besides, Judgy McJudgington, I’d like to point out that y’all wear some pretty goofy stuff yourselves in your quest for cutting-edge style.

Like gladiator heels, my MOST HATED SHOE.

To me, it just looks like you’ve got some sort of physiotherapy issue or ankle ailment.

Can you tell which are which?

I’m just saying.

There are zillions of less functional, more ugly pairs of shoes than the ones I use to keep my toes from freezing off, and yet the worst of these are trumpeted by all manner of style-setters and fashionistas… as they tumble from their lofty torture heels into city gutters, and fill their handbag du jour with gum wrappers, rain water, and vermin.

Blech!

So I don’t worry too much about it.

Anyway, if I had to choose:

That guy wears Uggs.

This guy? Doesn’t:

I REST MY CASE.

I have no problem deleting files, texts, emails, blog posts, tweets… anything.

I am a confident, swift, positively gleeful deleter if I don’t feel the need to keep something around, either because it has served its purpose… or failed to serve one in the first place.

Sometimes I delete things too soon, which requires reproducing them — but they’re usually better the second time, even if I drive myself insane in the process. If I have to request them from someone else, however, I end up feeling like the kind of heedless, irritating person who throws out a birthday card with cash still tucked inside.

Sometimes I delete out of some combination of thoughtfulness and cowardice because of the reaction something fosters in others (or might foster in others — I don’t hedge my bets), or I delete because I am confident I shouldn’t have sent whatever into the ether in the first place.

I’d like to say my tendency to delete has kept me out of hot water… but while you can delete things, you can’t actually un-say them.

I’d like to believe all this deleting uncomplicates my life… but I just fill in more where I delete, and complication returns via a sort of queasy, inevitable osmosis.

But I think I delete because I like tiny control.

I like to wrest order from disorder in temporary, yet giddy ways… though I don’t recognize them as that at the time.

It isn’t lost on me that when things seem truly crucial — work email, client email, pictures of family and friends on my phone/camera/laptop, texts full of loving, ridiculously gushy words from my gift of a new husband — my delete-happy ways fall by the proverbial wayside.

And I can’t ignore the reality that I most often delete to alleviate discomfort or self-disdain: when I say something badly or offend someone without thinking (or with thought, but just stupid ones); when I blather on and don’t recognize it in time; when I recognize the need for an edit after the fact; when I am temporarily uncomfortable in my own skin and figure that tapping out words or images or ideas will give me a bit more room to breathe.

It’s chicken.

I mean, sometimes it’s organized and smart and together. But it can definitely be chicken.

I don’t like to be an ass, as much as I may show tremendous facility for it. So I try and clean things up the same sort of vigor with which I’d attack a client paragraph with my virtual red pen: let’s get life down to the best of what it should have been, and hope that I don’t yammer on quite so much the next time.

But I will.

And something tells me I need to live with that discomfort a little more than I’m willing to now, even if I want to run up a tree like a crazy squirrel, dodging the feral cat of my own lameness.

(See? That metaphor was terrible, and I didn’t even get rid of it.)

Because it radiates out into the rest of my life, this delete-happy way of approaching the world. Uncomfortable conversations don’t get… conversed. Stupid mistakes don’t get learned from because I don’t choose to truly walk through how I got there. I don’t like revisiting failures, even though I am a past-master at self-deprecation. But I only think about it if I can make fun of it.

And ask, if you dare, my domestic co-pilot how much I love staring into a Google spreadsheet and calculating costs down to the dollar to set our family budget. You’ll learn that I don’t really want to know just how much I overspent on that really lovely block of Parmesan for really lovely Carbonara and also? I would like to not know AND buy it again.

I delete what I should learn from. I delete what is worth looking in the eye. I even delete what I could accept about myself, instead of feeling like I dodged a bullet by not having to look in the mirror. I delete before I figure out it’s not so bad, or that there might be a solution… other than obliteration.

Does it really go away, anyway?

I’ve become this for what seemed like the right reasons, but perhaps it’s time to be a little less of it for the right reasons.

Deleting my deleting.

And dealing.