To hell with them, I say.

I can remember prancing around the 1^st grade playground when I lived in Lake City Florida, wearing what remained of my costume from my ballet recital the weekend before. It was a flower hat… or maybe a face… thing. It was atrocious, humongous red and shiny satin petals with green sequins for leaves and it left itchy red marks on my face from the elastic that held it in place. But I didn’t consider any of that when I’d secretly stashed it in my She-Ra lunchbox without my Mom seeing before school that morning.

After lunch, I carefully adorned my head with the ugliest flower hat (which I’m sure went so well with my parachute pants and windbreaker of jeweled tones.. ahhhh the 90’s…) you’d ever seen and happily trotted off to play. This may come as a surprise to you but as I child, I was often in my own little universe. That was the case on this day, as I scaled the monkey bars upside down and climbed backwards up the slide on the playground. I remember after a few minutes though, that someone was following me. It was a girl from ballet class whom I didn’t particularly get along with.

She followed me at a distance at first. But as I upped the ante and made my play more dangerous (jumping out of the swing and attempting a full barrel roll, standing on top of the monkey bars) she continued to follow me. Finally, I turned around and yelled at her: “STOP COPYING ME!”  You will never believe what she said to me. “Your flower face is ugly!” She turned on the heel of her pink jelly shoes and walked away. I cried.

I have a tendency to overanalyze the things people say and do. I mull it over, wondering if it was a veiled insult or if it was discreetly directed towards me. I assume that the woes of others are always a result of something I have done. When someone does not follow through on intent, it drives me nuts and I wonder what I did to keep them from completing the agreed task or keeping their promise. I’m sure that sometimes, I am right. But the majority of the time, it’s probably much bigger than just little ol’ me. But I cannot help but worry that someone thinks my flower face is ugly.

When I got home that evening, I told my Dad what had happened. I remember him telling me that I should be proud that she had followed me that perhaps it meant she wanted to be LIKE me. I didn’t consider this to be true, I was the flower at the recital that tripped and stumbled and had her head turned to watch the teacher the entire time… and STILL got most of the steps wrong. Why would my assailant want to be like me? But in a way that only a Daddy can, my dad reassured me that I was someone worth following, that it meant you had their attention. He also reminded me that if she did NOT want to be like me, it didn’t matter. I was already being me so why did someone else need to do the job.

If only the biggest threat in life as an adult was an adult calling your ballet recital ugly. But that is not the case. There are always people who want to bring us down. They try to make us feel as though we are inferior. There are always people who will let us down when they do not keep commitments and promises. All of it hurts. It makes you wonder what transgressions you’ve committed that you’re unaware of to make someone behave the way they do. But here’s what I am beginning to realize.

It doesn’t matter.

Wear your flower face with a smile. Be who you want to be. Do what you need to do to be the best you can be and if others don’t want to help you along the way, know that you can’t change their reasons for their behavior, be it jealousy, bitterness or something that has absolutely nothing to do with you… which may be the case more often than you think. The point is, people will do what they feel is necessary and you cannot control that. What you can control is what is necessary for you. So to hell with them, I say. Be you and be good at it. Your hi-top Reeboks are probably cuter than their jelly shoes anyway ;)