Let's Do the Math

Mom and Grandma used to sew our clothes when we were young.

Like, all of our clothes.

Picture this: Fourth grade assembly on the auditorium/lunchroom/gymnasium floor. 

Everyone sitting crisscross applesauce.

Me, in my bright red jumpsuit that Mom had made me and my home-permed hair that made me look like a spitting image of Aunt Jemima, with burn marks on my scalp because Mom probably left it in a bit too long...

The assemble is over now. Time to go back to Mr. Bradley's classroom. I go to stand up and hear THAT sound.

No, I didn't poop my pants - but I might as well have!
The entire back of my homemade, bright-as-a-tomato-red jumpsuit with some sort of geometrical stripe design on the front, had just ripped.

The ENTIRE back - like everyone now knew that I wore Rainbow Brite undies that were two to three sizes too small for me - ENTIRE back.

I didn't move. 

The lunch ladies were coming to clear the floor in order to set up the lunch tables and they had to work around this glued-to-the-floor, chia-pet-head, WIDE open in the back fourth grader who was sitting in a puddle of her own tears.

Mom came.

We went home.

The only positive about that this-blows day was that I never had to wear that train-wreck of a jumpsuit again.

And I got to start wearing training bras.

And undies that actually fit.

That was also around the time that I started to hear such things as:

"If you were thinner, boys would like you."

"If you were smarter, you'd do better on those tests."

"If you were more out-going, you'd be able to be friends with the popular group."

"Why don't you try to do all of the fancy tricks those popular girls do on the monkey bars at recess? Then, maybe they'd like you."

**Tried that ONCE. Ended up with a raspberry on my forehead the exact same color as that ripe-tomato-red jumpsuit that I no longer had to wear.**

And, the seed was planted.

I wasn't good enough.

And I was the only one who could make me good enough.

If I lost weight, somehow completely changed my looks so that I was cuter, wore the same expensive-from-boutique-clothes the popular girls wore, immediately changed my IQ so that I didn't bomb every test I took... THEN and only then would I be accepted.

Get right on that, Heidi!

I was ten.

Ten years old.

Fast forward to July 2019.

I'm 42.

That's 32 years.

Pretty good math for someone who couldn't ever pass Math 1010.

Nailed it!!

I am sitting with a counselor.

I've just read off the two pages of everything wrong with me to her so as not to waste her time.

Like, let's get on with this curing thing, Lady.

I am 42 - going on death!

And she asks me this:

"What will make you enough?"

Ummmm... pretty sure that I just read you two pages, hand-written, in cursive, with perfect punctuation worth of words that tell you why I will NEVER be enough!

Not pretty enough. Not thin enough. Not smart enough. Have NO talents (sports, music, dance). Not the best mom. Suck the suck of the suck in relationships. Like, it's BAD!!

So, you're the expert - why don't you tell me?!

She then told me the worst thing ever - in the history of ever - like, I might as well be wearing that WAY-too-small-for-my-too-large-body-red hot-geometrical-one piece jumpsuit that ripped from the butt hole clear up to the neck line in front of the entire population of Malloch Elementary School again.

She said, "That's your homework for the week."

I said, "What?"

She said, "That's your homework. Figure out what makes you enough. Come back next Wednesday with the answer."

And with that, my recover began.