Compliments

I don’t know about the rest of you but I am quite horrendously bad at taking compliments, particularly about my looks.

Not that I often get compliments about my looks but when they do happen I get all kinds of flustered and have no idea what to do.  I generally go the joke route, ‘Well, obviously my dress looks good, it was designed to fit a pregnant elephant’ or blush and go all coy… which just turns me into a tomato.

But today I was told that I have lost some weight and was looking a lot better by someone who has no need to tell me that.  I, honestly did not know what to say.  My family don’t do compliments.  Mostly we pick on each other and make each other feel as crappy as possible under the guise of friendly banter.  Yep, this is the English way.

It’s even hard to take compliments by internet. These too have to met with a joke - most often ‘the cheque’s in the mail’ or some other cliched standby.  This mostly comes from a long line in not really getting the positive reaction when I do something right.

Wow, is this post ever not going in the direction I though it was going to.

Through most of my life I have tried hard to get affection through working harder and being better than anyone else.  I got into school plays and choirs and killed myself at school to get the occasional ‘well done’ and because of the aforementioned ‘no compliments’ ruling very rarely got them.  Or if I did they were vague and not appearing to be sincere.  I used to think this was because I was rubbish (even if 20 other people say you were great, those closest to you not saying anything cancels out any other praise); and then I went through a phrase of thinking it was because my parents, who are not in any way artistic, didn’t get what I was doing or didn’t appreciate it.  I still think this.

But now I look on it as more their failing for not even trying than mine for not trying to be the daughter they’d want.

We never really get over high school I suppose.  All the ridiculous achievements - certificates and drama club and the UK equivalent of AP classes and school choir and church choir and…( you get the picture - total nerd-dom.) well, they made me feel like I was getting somewhere.  That all this work would mean something afterwards.

Teachers destroyed my confidence in sixth form and still there was nothing to help me believe that it was going to be fine. And then I took a year off before uni. Which I now admit fully was a mistake.  I wanted to be a star - the reason I took the year off was being totally devoid of confidence and not wanting to go to the performing arts classes I had applied for because I knew I just knew I was going to embarrass myself.  I mean, who would want to watch a heavy lump like me prance about on stage?  Because that’s all I was - a heavy lump with no skills.

Thank God for the internet.  The fact that I am the size of a whale who has eaten well doesn’t matter here and the compliments and good feelings I get here help me to balance out the nothing from elsewhere.

So thank you.  I’m going to hide under a rock now.

Gotta Sing, gotta dance!...