Why Is it So Hard for Me to Be OK With My Flaws?

Hi Everyone!

First off, those of you who have been getting my blog via a reader...it seems everyone got kicked off in the past week or so, so please resubscribe if you'd like to keep reading. Thanks and sorry for the hassle! :)

So, I was reading an essay today, out of Charles Baxter's book "Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction," and came across the following (the writer is talking about how at funerals everyone just says good stuff about the person who has died):

"My problem was that I hadn't known the deceased well enough to know his failings--those features by which I might have identified with him--and the litany of praise only managed to distance him from me. I wanted a recital of his failures and oddities..."

He also wrote: "You don't cry at a funeral unless you have had the time to know the person who has died and to know that person in success as well as failure." 

This is something I think about sometimes. I love people for their flaws...their "oddities and failures"...to me it's what makes them interesting and quirky and human. Someone who looks and acts like they have the perfect life, I either barely know them or they are so foreign to me...I have so many flaws, I need other flawed (read: real) people to relate to, you know?

I am so open to and accepting of flaws in other people. But in myself? Not so much. In myself, I feel like flaws are something to be irradiated, hated, riled and fought against. I am not at all accepting of them, and I have lots. What comes to mind today:

• So emotional
• And sooooooooo sentimental, I get attached to/miss people and places and things with so much intensity, it is not healthy
• And I work too much
• And wish I was going to be a younger mother, but there's nothing to be done about that. Actually, I wish my body hadn't failed me so miserably in the reproductive department...that's what this one comes down to...
• I wish I could cook better...my husband is a great cook and essentially thinks I suck at it (although he does let me assist him)...which doesn't go along with my dreams of being the perfect housewife but oh, well
• My best friend dresses so much cuter than me
• I am not as good/strong/fast/risk-taking of a surfer/snowboarder as I want to be (although I AM pretty good [or used to be]...there's just always someone better than me)
• I don't really pursue my professional dreams, instead just stick with what's safe/easy
• I married my first husband for all the wrong reasons and what a disaster that turned out to be. Plus I wish I'd never been divorced
• Etc. Etc. Etc.

I don't know if it's just human nature to fight against your flaws. But a lot of what I hate are things I can't change. Some things I can change and maybe I can/should work on them. But I'm always going to have flaws.

I guess the question is how to embrace those flaws and be OK with them, you know? I am who I am, and I know there is a lot of good in me too, as there is in all my friends, whose flaws I love as they are what makes them human--what helps me, as Charles Baxter says, identify with them.

To go off on a slightly different tangent, I think this is what's behind why I love blogs so much...you get to meet people, flaws and all, whereas IRL everyone is generally just putting their best face forward...

What do you all think? How do you come to a place where you are OK with the parts of yourself that aren't so great?

XOXO