As much as it shames me to admit it, I have falled prey to the reality TV craze. If fact, it seems that there are really only three channels currently on my playlist: HGTV, Bravo, and the Food Network. Oh, yeah...I also watch TLC for Say Yes to the Dress and Four Weddings, slide over to BBC America for Kitchen Nightmares and No Kitchen Required, and flip to Fox for Master Chef and Hell’s Kitchen. Rarely does the screen on my TV display anything outside the realm of those channels...Unless, that is, my husband has gotten his hands on the channel changer before I do...
To delve just a little bit deeper, I am going to have to confess a fandom for the Housewives of New York (wow, those women can get nuts!); Bethanny Ever After; and the Bravo trio of women on Miss Advised. It’s a little bit mind-boggling to find how often I can relate to something that Bethanny Frankel or Miss Advised’s dating columnist Julia say...especially when it’s something that 90 percent of the other people watching from their couches think is completely neurotic.
It was, in fact, a recent episode of Miss Advised that got my little brain chugging along like crazy, thinking about how often in my own life I try to be someone that people will like. Like me! Like me! I sometimes want to shout...and I often wondered during my single years why a guy didn’t just fall to his knees in love after a date with me. What was so wrong with me? If I was interested in him, why wasn’t he interested in me? Was there something about me that needed to change? Was I unattractive, unintelligent, boring...What? Tell me, and I’ll fix it!
Anyway, back to the episode...Julia was being told by several people in her life that she needed to be more authentic––in her columns, in her dates, in her relationships in general. Be authentic seemed to be the battle cry. How often, I realized, I am afraid of being authentic. I’m afraid of seeming neurotic (which, let’s face it––I think most people would think I am, if they truly knew what all went on in this head of mine). I’m afraid of being silly and having someone look at me like I’m an idiot. I’m afraid of opening up and being criticized. Over the past few years, I’ve become so afraid of these things that it’s shrunken my world to the point that the people who know me best have become almost liabilities. They know my authentic self, the self that scares me. Unfortunately, that fear has also allowed me to damage some of the most important relationships in my life.
Be authentic. A directive that seems so simple, yet is so difficult sometimes. Still, true happiness and only be found in authenticity, no matter how scary it might seem. Open up, be vulnerable. Be authentic. Words to live by, to heal by...and to love by.
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