I'm a loser baby....

I have these feelings of inadequacy. And as I prepare myself for parent-teacher interviews tonight, they are coming out to the forefront. Most days I can put up a pretty good front, make people, and even myself, believe that I am pretty with it, but inside I am a puddle of doubt. It's always been this way, I don't ever remember not feeling inadequate by some means.

My first memory of this was when I was a small child, before my parents divorce, I was sitting on my Dad's lap and must have said something silly, he flicked my head jokingly and sent me off crying. I have that feeling of hurt and doubt in my heart from that moment, it's like he said to me, "My God! You are such an idiot." For as much as he is a good father, he has that insane ability to make me feel completely stupid and inept whether he means it or not.

It didn't help that I struggled my way through elementary school, finally in Grade 8 being told that unless I pulled some major grades out of my ass that I was going to be held back. Those were the worst two years of my life. We had just moved to a new city, I was failing school, I didn't have the clothes to fit into my preppy new surroundings (back in the Roots and Bennetton days), I had my spiked hairdo, I had no friends, my sister hated the word and me included and I was coping with abuse from an old neighbor. I came into the school thinking that it would be cool to be the new kid, but I was from a city that was a bit more hard rock and I just didn't fit in from day one. I had thought that I would have an ally in a second cousin that went to the school as she was always so nice at family gatherings, but she was "cool" and I wasn't and she and her best friend were probably two of the worst to me (at least of the girls). Once I hit my second year of grade 8, I had at least made some friends, but by then they were all in grade 9 and I was alone throughout classes to abuse. At home things weren't going well, during that first year my sister did everything in her power to piss my Mom off and it worked, at the end of that year she was shipped off to live with my Dad in Vancouver. I remember feeeling like, what kind of punishment is this? She gets to go live with our Dad (in Vancouver of all places!), while I have to stay back in grade 8 hell and be the focus my Mom's attention?! Mom was worried about me, so I got to go to modelling classes (with the amazingly pretty girls) to improve my self-esteem and counselling to figure out why I was so upset (um, failure anyone?!), and then to top it all off I got to attend a bonus program at school, for all of us "on the edge" kids. I think it was called a peer-relations group, it was a good idea and I see the good they were trying to do, but unfortunately it singled all of us losers out so the other kids knew just exactly who we were, if they weren't already clear before. Thankfully at the end of that year I got to go live with my Dad too, and I got to re-create myself again, but this time nobody knew that failure who didn't know how to dress or fit in, they got to meet the new-and-impoved me. The one that was good at hiding all of her failure from the world.

I still see myself hiding these inadequacies, hoping that it will make people like me more (and from my hordes of friends you can see that I have accomplished this, or not). I still struggle to fit in, to wear the cool clothes, to be as smart as everyone else. Some days I feel like I never left grade 8 and that soon everyone will see the real me and my cover will be blown. Even with this blog, I know I'm not a great writer, I haven't taken any literature courses since high school nor do I have the urge to. I read other blogs and say to myself, "No wonder nobody but friends read your blog, you suck." I can do this to myself about anything, dieting, writing, artist-ing, even parenting. I can tell myself "What makes you qualified to say anything about what your daughter needs at school? You are not very smart, my dear. Just shut up and do as they say." And if I let myself talk that way for too long then I loose my nerve to stick up for my daughter. Then I become that girl from grade 8 who was nothing.

So this afternoon I want to wallow in the self pity and doubt. But tonight I will be that person, the one that has it all together. I will hide behind my mask and become who I need to be, so that maybe my girls won't ever feel the way that I do.