I watch Antiques Roadshow. Not religiously, but I will pause when I flip past it.
I know, I know. I should put that on a profile somewhere… that is, when I’m not busy brewing a pot of Pekoe and knitting an afghan.
I certainly don’t BUY antiques. I’m really not interested in LOOKING at antiques. Not an antiques girl by any definition, frankly. But I’m fascinated by three moments that occur fairly often in the show:
1. When folks find out that thing in the attic that they were about to toss out is worth stupid amounts of cash.
2. When people come in with something horrendous, filled with absolute CERTAINTY and EXPERT KNOWLEDGE that it is worth stupid amounts of cash… and then it isn’t.
3. Watching the experts discover some flaw in something ALMOST great… and then suddenly it’s a dime sale castoff.
Victory!
Justice!
Pathos!
Drama!
Lineups!
It’s just like life.
Actually, a little too much like life.
Sometimes I feel like one of those objects that was supposed to be worth something good — giant goals, giant dreams, giant ideas — but then all these flaws came to light, and suddenly I was just something you could plant your marigolds in.
People are not like antiques, I tell myself (unless they are very old and very still). Our flaws are just a part of who we are — not the defining thing, as with a crack in a 300 year-old vase or a scratch on an armoire.
Even then, the people who really love those objects love the flaws as a part of what they are.
It’s only when they face outside evaluation that it matters.
I spent the majority of the years between 12 and 32 with one big plan in mind: to get married, have babies, and become a mom.
And yes, to be a lawyer, too… no, no… a writer.
Still, for me the whole family thing wasn’t a, “Oh, yes, this will happen eventually and in time. ” It was a genuine JOY to think of it. I couldn’t wait for the whole process — not because I was so traditional that I believed it was my only calling in life, but because it seemed like everything I liked about myself suited me to nurture little people and build a relationship with someone I loved.
This had to be what the big squishy heart was for.
Once I got to the age where these things started to happen to people around me, it quickly became apparent that I wasn’t going to have the easiest journey with the opposite sex. I didn’t have a great body or face, and that seemed to get in the way of relationships.
Guys told me I was the nicest girl… but just weren’t attracted to me. Some of them were less kind about it. Some of them were downright mean.
The rejections — and the defenses I built up as a result — were the first chip that emerged on my surface.
But when everyone around me was getting married, I had faith it would happen eventually. That someone would look at me and see something they wanted. I focused on working hard instead, and being the best person inside that I could be.
Someone told me at the time I was lucky that I could focus on building a career.
And I so did work hard — incredibly hard. Just not at the thing I ultimately wanted to do, and at a pace that left me exhausted and frustrated at the end of the day. I put tons of time and energy into it, and what I got back out — while wonderful at times — just wasn’t enough.
So I quit, and in the midst of actually following my dream, nearly lost everything.
Chip number two.
It wasn’t until I was 31 that I finally got myself on course, and while that’s not impossibly late, it felt a bit silly… as though I should have figured things out sooner.
But I could deal with my challenges because I still had my hope intact in the future and I LOVED what I was doing now. I still wanted big things in terms of a life and a family, and nothing had happened to show me it was truly impossible yet.
Then a year later, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that explained one thing about me and gave me some forewarning about another. My difficulty in losing weight (aka, being something other than the “nice” girl or the “funny” girl to some men) was due to a massive set of imbalances in my body… and those same imbalances had rendered me irrevocably infertile.
Chip number three.
As I began dealing with that amidst hormone treatments that made me stupidly sick — treatments that weren’t to restore fertility, but to cut down on a huge risk of diabetes and cancer and who knows what else — I finally felt like my value had gone south.
This was not a thing to keep my chin up about, and to smile through, and to work hard to overcome. This just sucked, and there wasn’t anything I could do except radically adjust my expectations, and live with it.
Of course I knew I would adopt, and of course I knew that it wouldn’t matter to every guy I’d meet that he couldn’t have his own kids. Plenty of men out there even like the idea of adopting better.
I just didn’t know any of them yet, and I’d have to find one that also didn’t mind that I was built more like a squash than an hourglass, and also didn’t mind that I was just launching my career.
I’ll admit — it rocked me harder than ever before that my idea of myself and my future had taken so many hits. I felt like the person standing in line for hours, only to find out that their painting was actually a knockoff.
But.
I’ve spend the time since then working all of this out — the things I have, the things I want, the changes in perspective, the ways to love myself in the midst of it all. And I haven’t done it perfectly, by any stroke of the imagination.
I’ve been angry, I’ve been hurt, I’ve been distracted, I’ve let myself get caught up in the disappointment of others, and I’ve definitely beaten myself up about the first 34 years of my life more than once. I have entire lists of the things I could and should have done differently.
But those lists aren’t getting me anywhere.
The things that ARE getting me somewhere are the hard work I put into what I do, the open heart I maintain at all costs, and taking joy in what I have now, not what I meant to have.
I don’t think I’m alone in having two parallel realities in my life, though: what I struggle with, and what I keep doing in spite of it. One doesn’t make the other go away… but I think it can in time. And I’m certainly not waiting to live; I wouldn’t even know how to actually stand still, or give up.
Even if it hurts sometimes, you get on with it.
But here’s the thing: in the last few months, I’ve realized that the only way I’ll ever truly get on with it is if I stop seeing myself as ANY of the scenarios above. Not just the chipped-and-now-worthless object, but ANYTHING that involves waiting for someone else or some arbitrary standard to ascribe (or deny) me value.
I am not some great thing waiting to be discovered and hauled out of the attic. People have seen me and loved me my whole life, and that makes me blessed. I was never set aside and forgotten. To say otherwise would be a lie.
I am also not some great thing full of self-inflated value waiting to be “found out” as useless. I believe in myself only for things that are true, and that can’t be taken away from me. It’s up to me to hold on to that reality, no matter what.
And finally, I am not damaged beyond value. Not even close.
So I am stepping out of the line to be assessed, and continuing on my own (not antique at all) road show — because I was always on it, anyway. And if there are bumps in the journey, so be it. And if I pick up more dents, so be it. And if anyone doesn’t like the path I take or the way I deal with it, so be it. And if I occasionally backtrack and focus on the wrong stuff and get a little lost, so be it.
I can live with it.
And I’m quite certain everyone else can, too.
