Loving the Bomb and Sucking Out the Poison

If you’ve been feeling inadequate, lonely, unnoticed, and completely unremarkable this post is for you.


If you’re struggling to find your tribe, your people, or learning to ‘invest in people who invest in you’ then this post is for you.


If you’re feeling worthless and somewhat unaccomplished, this post is for you.


If you’re feeling like you’re doing an OK job at lots of things but not a great job at any one thing in your life, this post is for you.

I know, pretty heavy for a Wednesday morning and for someone who typically counts herself as having “good self esteem” and generally “thinks highly of herself” and who incidentally also likes “to overuse quotation marks” but yes, I have been feeling all of the above for some time now and because I usually work these things out through writing I’m going to try to work some of this out today. I’m not sure if I’ll hit publish, but of course if you’re reading this then we’ll both know I did.

Lately, I keep going back to 6th grade, which for me happened to be at Goddard Middle school in Littleton, Colorado. I had always navigated the school social scene fairly well. I had a lot of friends  in elementary school and had always been part of the (forgive me for saying this) “cool kids” group. As far as I was concerned I dug school and school dug me and 6th grade was shaping up to be more of the same. As is commonly done, our middle school was the product of two different elementary schools merged together, which also meant the subsequent merging of the social hierarchy from these same two schools. Having never had a problem with these types of mergers before I was confident I would once again be a key part of the social scene and surely this would be the best year yet.

You’ve no doubt deduced by now that this is not what happened.

As that first week of 6th grade commenced and I set about networking as per the usual customs–sitting with my old friends and the new cool girls for lunch, hanging out in front of school before the first bell rang–something  inexplicable happened. I struck out. Somehow, that first week of school, there had been an unofficial yet at the same time very official vote cast and I was black balled and deemed unworthy of the new 6th grade cool girls super group.

It took a while to really sink in. Surely there had been some mistake… why weren’t my old friends speaking up for me? Why didn’t the new girls (who were definitely the queen bees) find me cool enough?

Did I have my bangs properly rolled and hair-sprayed into a stiff claw-like structure?  Check.
Did I have an interesting back-story about being bitten by a dog on the face over the summer? Check.
Was I wearing Esprit? Check.

What else could I have done? I don’t really know what happened but nevertheless, I was not welcome in this new group. Having no other options I became what was known as a “follower.” A follower was someone who wasn’t really part of the group but followed them around anyway during lunch and recess. I knew they weren’t my friends, yet some of them had been my friends and so I kept pretending like these kids were my friends. Except I wasn’t pretending. I knew they didn’t want me around but the further we got into the school year and the more other friendships and groups were being solidified into what seemed at the time to be impermable tribes of friendship that would last for all eternity, and I missed my window to break into another group. I was stuck. And it sucked you guys, it sucked rocks. 

Of course like all trials I also gained a whole new perspective on my life at the time. I understood how quickly things could change and how precarious friendship could be at this age. And now I, who had always been unquestionably cool, now knew what it was to be uncool. 

However, I also instinctively understood (thankfully) that their perception wasn’t real. What I mean by that is that I never actually believed that I was uncool or unworthy of their friendship, I just thought they missed the memo. I distinctly remember thinking, Oh…they don’t get it. I’m actually really cool and funny. (So much funnier than they were in fact. This is actually a really important sticking point here people. I could not believe how unfunny these girls were and yet the kids… they laughed. I don’t blame them. In the communist world that is the 6th grade social structure when the proverbial Chairman Mao makes a joke, you laugh.) Anyway, for a while I was actively trying to change the situation, hoping that a well timed come-back or a really sweet cardigan would ease me into fold. But of course that never happened. And while I subtly tried to change the situation, fortunately I never thought about changing myself.

I survived that year and the one thing I knew for sure was that I would never put myself in a situation like that again. This was the first time I would be learning the lesson to “invest in people who invest in you.” I eventually accepted the fact that those girls didn’t want to be my friends and I had to move on.

So I did. I devised a very strategic and tactical plan over the summer.  Ready for it? Make Amber D. my best friend. That was my entire plan. Sure it was an all-my-eggs-in-one-basket type of plan, but what did I have to lose? Miraculously, it worked. Amber and I became best friends during those next two years of middle school and I attribute some of my very favorite childhood memories to our friendship. Amber and I are still in touch, I went to her wedding 6 years ago and we cried when we saw each other. Even though we don’t talk often I still count her as the first true friend I ever had. We didn’t get in petty fights, we didn’t do any of that middle school girl crap to each other. We were just really good friends. And as time and distance separated us over the years we would always pick back up where we left off. In the end, being kicked out of the cool kids club was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Back to the present day. One of the most surprising things about being a grown up is realizing that I don’t have things more figured out, I have them less figured out. Having moved 4 times in our 10 years of marriage, all while becoming a mother, learning how to parent and how to be a wife while still trying to maintain me is difficult at best and one small shove away from a tight, white jacket and a padded room at worst.

I love this online world I’m a part of. Outside of my family it’s been one of the most consistent things I’ve had in my life the past 10 years. But at the same time I’ve often felt like my 6th grade self again… not quite cool enough. Except often it’s worse than that. I don’t feel good enough. Part of it is simply finding the time to pursue some of my goals and interests (I’m working on that–it’s been really hard trying to find outside help), but the other part are feelings of sheer inadequacy. It is easy to get caught up in the comparison trap. There are so many people killing it at what they do. In the words of Mr. Cool J, they are doin’ it, and doin’ it and doin’ it well. Whether it’s being a mother, a wife, a blogger, an artist, a decorator, a photographer, being a friend, or even making friends I have felt inadequate and have struggled to feel competent in all these areas of my life as of late.

Now unlike my 6th grade experience I haven’t faced any mean girls per se (at least not overtly), but I haven’t found my Amber D. either. But also unlike my 6th grade self I’ve allowed myself to be sucked into the lie that I am not enough. Right now every little thing from how I parent to how my house is decorated for Halloween feels sub par, and for some reason this is getting tangled up in my actual self worth. Which only makes me want to get down on myself more because I know better. These things are not who I am and do not equate to my worth. And yet… the feelings say otherwise. Not a fun cycle to be caught it.

Forgive me for switching gears yet again, but I promise this will all come together… there are a couple articles I’ve read in the past few weeks that have really stayed with me through all this crazy self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness lately. They go in completely different directions, but they correlate in an unexpected way.

The first article is from Elna Baker a name some of you may recognize as a contributor to This American Life. In the article, Elna talks about her history with weight loss and general negative body issues. It was really her last two lines that hit me hard and you don’t need to read the entire article to get the context, although of course it will help. After talking about extreme weight loss and surgery to remove excess skin, and still not feeling happy with her body and feeling like a hypocrite at the same time she closes with this: “The truth is I think everyone should genuinely accept themselves–everyone, except for me. This is the disease I am still trying to overcome.”

Ugh. On one level or another we all get this. For me, I sit here as someone who writes about our value as human beings regardless of our abilities or disabilities, regardless of our successes or failures… I feel like I could look every single person I meet in the eye and tell them they are priceless beyond measure simply for existing, and yet I struggle to believe this about myself.

The other article comes from an interview with Stephen Colbert. This was a surprisingly good and insightful read, but it’s long and you have to read to the end. Honestly, it’s well worth your time–read it here. In it he says that one of his improv teachers told him the most important lesson he could pass onto them was this: “‘You have to learn to love the bomb.’ He goes on to say, ‘It took me a long time to really understand what that meant.  It wasn’t ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get it next time. It wasn’t, laugh it off.’ No, it means what it says. You gotta learn to love when you’re failing… the embracing of that, the discomfort of failing in front of an audience, leads you to penetrate through the fear that blinds you.  Fear is the mind killer.” 

Whoa, right? It gets better.

He then goes on to talk about losing his dad and two of his brothers when he was 10 years old to a plane crash and yet he is a genuinely happy, even joyful person who carries no anger in his heart for the circumstances of his youth. He talks about his mom, “‘And by her example I am not bitter. By her example. She was not. Broken, yes. Bitter, no.'” The article goes on to say, “Maybe, he said, she had to be that for him. He has said this before–the even in those days of unremitting grief, she drew in her faith that the only way to not be swallowed by sorrow, to in fact recognize that our sorrow is inseparable from joy, is to always understand our suffering, ourselves, in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity? ‘It was a very healthy reciprocal acceptance of suffering,’ he said. ‘Which does not mean being defeated by suffering.  Acceptance is not defeat. Acceptance is just awareness,’ He smiled in anticipation of the callback:  ‘You gotta learn to love the bomb,’ he said.”

I just want to make sure you’re paying attention because this is the kicker. Colbert goes on to say, “Boy did I have a bomb was I was 10. The was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that’s why. Maybe, I don’t know. That might be why you don’t see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It’s that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.” 

I’ve been trying to figure out for weeks how my 6th grade experience relates to my present life. I think the main lesson is in learning to love the bomb–the embracing of circumstances in your life that will breed acceptance, which turns into strength and helps you rise above. In 6th grade I learned to love the thing that I most wish had not happened. Being a social outcast was the best thing that ever happened to me at that age. I was freed from being this person who had to fall in with the social norms that dictated what it meant to be popular. For years now I have had this realization that I’m a little too artsy for the mainstream crown and a little too mainstream for the artsy crowd. 6th grade was when this realization was starting to come into focus and had I been accepted back then I’m not sure I would have been the same person I am today. I learned to love the bomb. I didn’t realize it, I wasn’t trying to, but I did.

But when you find yourself spiraling down in shame, fear, inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt, anger, and self-loathing, you suck that poison right out, because that shiz is lethal.