I’ve been realizing lately that I am not very cool. Or smart. Or funny. Or pretty. Or kind.
I used to think that I was really smart, because I read more than my classmates in high school and therefore my vocabulary was better. I never got good grades, but that was because grades weren’t really a measure of how smart you were. They were just a measure of how well you did the banal homework assigned to you out of a workbook. Or how well you copied off your smarter friends.
In college, I thought I was pretty cool. I wore weird clothes and listened to cool music. It’s hard to think you’re cool when you’re fat, which I have always been, but I thought being tall lent me a physicality that made me sort of butch-intimidating. I was also pretty queer, which maybe because I love queer people seems inherently cool. But as I got older, I started to realize that I didn’t really like “cool people.” They were kind of boring, and they worried more about being cool than being a good friend.
I try to be a good friend, but I wouldn’t describe myself as kind. I am overly blunt and often harsh. I care deeply about people and ideas, but I say things without thinking them through a lot. I am only occasionally articulate. I am not always good at taking care of my partner, and I worry I’ll be a horrible mother. I will nurture with fierceness, I’m sure.
So if I’m not any of these things, what’s my thing? It’s not my career, or my creativity, because I can’t seem to be bothered to express that and would just rather watch British Bake Off. What’s my thing that makes me not boring?
Perhaps I’ve come to a point in my life where I need to realize that being boring is not a sin.