I am DIVINE, just not THAT Divine…

I’m pretty full of myself. Well, at least in the past few years. Or months. Weeks? Whatever…I’m really good at seeming confident, which really, counts for a lot. But since I started my blog I’ve gotten really confident – in my fashion, my writing skills, who I am. So, I start to think that maybe I am finally impervious to the comments of other people – which has always been my Achilles’ heel. I am sarcastic, and I can dish it out and take it – but I can’t take unsolicited comments, especially those said behind my back. One negative comment can knock me from my pedestal in an instant – blow me right off and have me land flat on my face, struggling to get up again.

So, that happened Saturday.

I was informed that someone “jokingly” likes to tell everyone (including my boy!) that he thinks I am really a man. And that I look like the famous drag

Devine...or me?

queen, Divine.

Ouch.

Usually, I can just laugh this type of thing off, but this one really hit me. It sent my happy Saturday morning of running errands, drinking coffee, and tidying up my apartment while I waited for my bestie, to me laying in bed, feeling miserable.

The reason why?

All through my childhood and my teen  years, I had to deal with boys bullying me, always calling me a “man” or drawing pictures of me with a mustache, or making fun of my voice and imitating it. I always tried to brush it off, holding back tears, because if I got upset at all, they would just push it further and get others to join in. I had no confidence in high school. I had my small group of friends, but even that didn’t give me any self-esteem. I was a geek, I played clarinet, I was a fat girl with a deep voice,  I dressed like either a wannabe skater (Billabong, anyone?) or a goth kid (Yup, dog collar, bondage pants and all!) to try to show that I didn’t care what people said about me, but oh, did I. I cared too much. I grew up in such a small town, went to a K-12 school with the same people the entire time, so I turned into a big ball of self-doubt.

But then I went to college. And I realized, I can be whoever I want to be. No one here knows me. I can be WHO I AM. And my transformation began. My fashion changed drastically; cut-off teeshirts, big flare jeans, moving on to more sophiscated things as the years went on, and I finally felt good about myself. I found my niche and I wasn’t afraid of anything.

But sometimes, that high school feeling just creeps up on me, like it did on Saturday. I lost who I was for a while. And after having a mini-pity party for myself, I thought:

WHO CARES WHAT ANYONE ELSE SAYS – YOU ARE NOT THAT TEENAGER ANYMORE!

And I got up, I put on my new pink dish gloves (of course I have pink dish gloves!) and did all the dishes while Carl mopped the floors and my dogs all played on the balcony.

And hey, Divine was a pretty amazing, talented person who broke a lot of boundaries and was loved by many – so go ahead, call me DIVINE!

Do your old insecurities still get to you sometimes? How do you deal with them?