Kicking the (nonexistent) tires

PhD Coachy said something that stuck with me the other day. He said that a kid once brought into his office a book of amazing lego models which included a picture of a landspeeder (pictured at left) and he was glad to learn the name of this mode of transportation, because he thought about it from time to time.

He thought about it in relation to me because he was noticing that my most critical inner critic was “kicking the tires” when in fact, I was more landspeeder than car, and in fact, no longer even had tires.

Does that make sense?

There’s this part of me that is stubbornly convinced of my unattractiveness. That beats myself up over not being prettier, assumes I need to compensate for my ugliness. It’s kicking the tires, thinking they are not well inflated enough, and really ought to be whitewalls, and have beautiful, custom rims, when I don’t even have tires anymore. I’m a friggin’ landspeeder. I hover above the ground. Tires would only slow me down. How attractive I am to that out-of-whack part is irrelevant.

And one more thing from PhD Coachy — when we were both looking at a photo I brought in of me as a child that I was critical of, that what he noticed most was that it seems like I have this invitation to play in my eyes, my face, my stance. And that I still have that.

Yes. I do. That’s such an essential part of me. I LOVE to play. I hate being too busy to play. I want to romp around ALL THE TIME. I can’t — and that’s okay, life sometimes demands work over play, and I like work sometimes, too. But I do have such a drive to play. I don’t know to what extent we all do. I certainly see it with SuperHeroPrincess.

So, while life has delivered a whole heaping bunch of emotional pain and logistical difficulty lately, one upside is that SuperHeroPrincess and I are able to look each other in the eye and really see each other, and from time to time, I can set aside whatever it is that I am supposed to be doing and play with her.

Have I mentioned how much I love her lately? I have to her. She has to me. I told her I love her more than all the water in all of the oceans and all the sand on all the beaches in all of the world. And that might be an understatement.

She’s an amazing mode of transportation.