life, the universe, and donna

I tend to be fairly self deprecating. I don’t actually mean any of it, and my self esteem is fine, but it’s definitely a holdover from when I had the self esteem of a particularly ugly rock. I gained a defense mechanism which was to put myself down first, and do a much better job of it than anybody else. I was the MASTER of insulting myself, and nobody could say worse things about me than I could. In that way, it worked amazingly well. I became rather flame proof, gained incredibly thick skin, and for the most part, didn’t care what people thought of me.

The sacrifice was that if you spend years telling yourself you’re worthless without any sort of counter, especially if those years are impressionable preteen/teen years… you do eventually believe what you’re saying. How can you not? I had virtually zero self worth for most of my teens and a good part of my 20s; contributing, if not leading to that crushing depression I experienced in my early 20s. So the exchange I made for not letting other peoples words hurt me is that my own were a thousand times worse.

In the long run, not a very equal trade. I don’t recommend this.

I’m much better now (she says, wryly.) A few years of therapy, medication, and some wonderful people who love me (uh, and not being a hormonal teenager), and I can now be occasionally self deprecating without it affecting my self worth. Which is good, because it’s a form of humor that I’ve developed pretty well, and if I can avoid the negative aspects of it, it’s a pretty good way of keeping humble. Laugh at yourself first, because honey, you ain’t the perfect being you think you are.

That said, I never did get very good at vulnerability, or putting myself out there. I still expect that extending my hand is going to lead to being bitten. So I still don’t do it often to the general public.

I’ve been trying to do it more lately, and thus far, it’s worked wonderfully in my favor. Sometimes I run upstairs to show Nick my latest creation, and I feel like a little kid showing off my spelling test, hoping for a gold star. Of course, being supremely wonderful, he’s amazingly supportive with his feedback, either offering accolades or inspiration (usually both). I love bouncing my ideas off of him, even if I end up doing my own thing. He never dismisses my silly ideas, but often comes up with improvements. I love that. Admittedly, I’m a bit approval-seeking from Nick — we’ve joked we should buy that pack of gold stickers, or maybe he should hang some of my stuff on the fridge (we had a discussion last night about putting magnets in soap so they’d stick to the fridge. Uh…. maybe not.)

Anyway. So a few days ago, I made a batch of soap with some new colorant I picked up, making another attempt at swirlies (thus far, previous attempts at swirlies haven’t turned out exactly the way I wanted. Not bad, just not as awesome as I was hoping for.) When I unmolded it on Monday and sliced it up… I was SO excited with how it turned out. It had awesome swirls, and very cool looking designs all through it. The base was the standard cream color that I usually get from using olive oil (it’s very dark, so it colors the soap a bit) with the swirls a dark maroon/russet color. Nick agreed with me that it looked really awesome, so I took some pictures of it yesterday, and uploaded one.

Y’know, I can take criticism. I’m okay with that. However, I am not always the best at taking criticism when I’m not expecting it. When I think I’ve made something really awesome, and I’m not anticipating a negative reaction… it comes as a surprise, and I react a lot worse. So, I was a little dismayed when the first response was that it looked like meat.

And moreso when the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc all agreed. In the end I had nine people tell me in various independent channels that it looked like meat. A big hunk of fatty gross meat.

I know the responses weren’t designed to hurt, and I’ve had half of those people trying to convince me that looking like meat is a good thing. For the record, it’s not. Go ahead — I dare you to put something out that you’re really proud of for being pretty and have it compared to meat. Tell me how it feels when people tell you that it looks like a big hunk of fat. And even if you’re okay with it, good for you. I wasn’t.

Nick says I set myself up in the past by being a little self deprecating about previous soaps that didn’t turn out the way I liked — my Ugly soap, for example. Heck, the Strawberry Chocolate soap that I thought looked like ham. And here’s the difference: I said it first. I SAW it first. I wasn’t super proud of my ugly soap, because oops, I fucked it up and it came out looking like meatloaf. (Funny thing? A lot of people really liked it. It was a big seller at the last craft fair I did. Cool.) This wasn’t something that came out of the mold and I went “oops! Well, that didn’t turn out how I wanted…” This came out and I thought “holy fuck, that’s gorgeous! Look what I made! I am so proud of me!”

And this? This is why I’m not good at sharing things like this without some form of self deprecating humor: those responses hurt so much I cried for a good fifteen minutes last night. Dwelling on it now still makes me tear up a little. For those playing at home, I’m not much of a crier. See above about being somewhat flame-proof. Well, except for sad movies. I cry at sad movies. Shh.

If it had been one or two… I could have laughed it off, and concentrated on the more positive responses. Except… I didn’t get any (well, not until I deleted the picture and expressed said dismay.) I got nine people telling me something that I was really proud of looked like something gross.

For those who told me it looked like meat: I’m not upset with anyone for being honest, and I know that nobody meant any harm. It still hurt a lot.

Saving grace: Nick assures me that in real life, it looks nothing like meat. But I’m a little gun shy, so I’ll leave the pictures offline. I’m not really looking for false praise either, and now I suspect re-uploading would just get a bunch of feelgood platitudes.

Pride goeth before the fall? I guess so.