Pure self-indulgence...don't say you weren't warned ; )
I care far, far too much what other people think. In fact, I care far too much what you think, too, so I'd be very much obliged if you'd stop reading here. This is going to be one of those blogs that's almost embarrassingly personal. Anyway, you were warned.
Ahem...I care far, far too much what other people think.
I dress it up with vague feelings of superiority. Example: At a wedding breakfast, I sit next to a man who tells me he works 'in the City'. After about ten minutes of talking about his car, he asks me what I do. I tell him. A blank look spreads over his face, and he turns away to talk to his neighbour, also in the City. I feel sorry for this neighbour, who seems like a nice man, because he's forced to spend the rest of the meal listening to various amusing anecdotes poking fun at other people. You know, people who really deserve to be laughed at. Teachers, charity workers, those kinds of losers 
.
I don't get more than another two minutes of his attention, and one minute of that is when he's asking me to pass the butter. While I'm relieved not to have to talk to him, I never manage to find out specifically what he does. Either he doesn't want to tell me he's the tea boy, or he believes his job is so special my head would implode if I tried to grasp the complexities of it.
I'm really rooting for explanation 1. But it wouldn't explain the new flat in Hammersmith.
Anyway, I go home and laugh at him. He actually believes he's at the top of an all-important pile, because he thinks everyone else shares his ambitions. That the only reason they aren't on 100 grand a year is that they are somehow, shamefully, lacking. In ability, drive, inborn greatness etc.
I am not joking here. This actually happened a few weeks ago. Poking fun right back at the guy is a self-preservation thing. I didn't like him, but I still needed him to like me. And when he didn't, it became easier to laugh at him than face the pain.
Underneath my veneer of superiority, there's a sinkhole of sucking emptiness. Because it's been a long time since I felt at the top of the pile in anything. Even something really pointless.
I have cripplingly low self-esteem. Really, it's shocking. I can't pinpoint exactly where it came from - as far as I can remember, I've always been this way. I was one of those kids who would let praise slide off their back, but soak up every throwaway negative comment like a sponge, sucking it in, dispersing it throughout and letting it rankle away there for the rest of their lives.
Amplifying the problem is that my standards for everything are just too high. I'm a frustrated uber-perfectionist (see, you can tell - it's really worrying me that I don't know how to find an umlaut).
Basically, I think I am crap at everything and in every way. I didn't recognise the low self-esteem and perfectionism until a couple of years ago. Of course not - I just thought I was a useless lump. And yes, not knowing held me back, but I actually preferred it that way. Ignorance can be bliss. Because now I know - and now it turns out everyone else oh-so-cleverly knew all along ('What? You didn't realise? Oh...silly thing!) - not only do I have something new to worry about (I'm not just a useless lump, I'm a neurotic useless lump), but I constantly have to endure other people completely discounting whatever I say or want. 'Don't be stupid,' they say, exasperated, insistent. 'You're not thinking straight. You know you can't trust yourself.' Well thanks, guys, that's really incredibly helpful.
Then there's the realisation that my non-existent self-esteem has led me to chuck away almost everything good that's come my way. Exciting job? Offered to me over hundreds of other better-qualified, more experienced applicants (actually, better-qualified's a joke. I didn't even have a qualification). Anyway, great. Now I'll decide, based on no evidence whatsoever, that I am No Good at it, leave, realise promptly I was pretty darned good at it, then fail to get back into the industry.
Pretty? Reasonably thin? Yay! Or...nah, it's Not Good Enough. I'm Fat and Ugly. Enter a cycle of starving and bingeing - now I really am fat and ugly. Don't believe me? Of course you don't. Well, just ask my husband's work mates. Except, no, you won't believe me when I tell you what they said either, will you? I just imagined it.
Go home and write a book. In fact, no, write four. Impressive, no? But don't bother finishing them. Get to 80 per cent done, then start another project. Well, no one would publish them, would they? And even if they did, you'd be ashamed if anyone you know read them. Well...they're crap. And there's another kid from your class who's a 'proper' novelist now.
You can't impress yourself. So you start trying to impress other people. But you pick people who, it seems, can't be impressed.
Take the job, for example. You know, the one you got in the face of such stiff competition. A week later, you're on your way to visit your parents for the weekend. You meet your mum's friend in the shopping centre. She asks you what you're doing. You're surprised she doesn't already know, but you tell her anyway. 'Well, that's great,' she says. 'Well done.'
She's so gutted she looks like she just bit down on a lemon. She's always loved to compare you unfavourably with her own kids.
You laugh in the car on the way to your parents'. You find her jealously strangely affirming. And you don't actually care what she thinks. At least your parents will be proud.
Except, unaccountably, they're not. Their little girl. The one they paid so handsomely to put through private school (topping up the scholarship) and then university. And she's working at some little paper in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Cornwall, earning peanuts, peanuts I tell you. When a degree will get you anywhere you want to go (my parents were born in the 50s, they believe this).
When you tell them you were picked over hundreds of applicants, applicants who were prepared to move from anywhere - Scotland, Darkest Peru, yes, even London - to come to this town in the middle of nowhere in Cornwall to work on this little paper, it's like they don't hear you. 'But it's such crap money,' they say. When you tell them the professor you worked with told your boss you were one of the most promising journalists he'd seen in 40 years of teaching, they are confused. 'That's great, but why don't you get more money, then?' they say.
You are angry with them. But deep down at some more vital level, you feel bruised. You clock up another Fail mark.
Yep. I care far, far too much what other people think. Just to make it even worse, I am aware they probably aren't thinking all the damning things I ascribe to them. Because, as I've been told, I'm silly. I just can't trust myself.
Low self-esteem. Gotta love it. And a nice dose of self-pity's always good, too. Think I've had just about all I can take for one day , though.
Rach xxx 