Look closer.

Ever since I was a kid, I've believed in what I saw. I think that has a lot to do with why I'm as messed up as I am today.

Example: the "cool" kids who picked on me all through school - I always thought they were really as tough as they pretended to be. I was well into adulthood before I understood that they were just scared, stupid kids like me, only with better masks.

I watched innumerable sitcoms and romantic comedies, and came to believe that the happy ending was a reality in every situation. I thought that everyone who hurt me would either apologize or get theirs in the end. I fell for guys who underestimated or ignored me, firmly convinced that they would come to appreciate me finally, because I'd been there for them, devoted and dependable through it all.

Madison Avenue, with its ideals of what a woman should look like and how she should dress - that messed me up for years, because I totally believed it!

And I thought my family had it all together - that they were perfect and normal, so that was how I was supposed to be. Being good seemed to come so easily for all of them; it wasn't easy for me, so I thought I must be the misfit. And that went for almost everybody around me, as well - they all seemed to be so cool and together; if they struggled the way I did, I never knew it, so I was jealous of everyone and never felt like I fit in anywhere.

I'm learning now, not only to accept that I am flawed (and that that's ok) but that everybody else is, too. I feel much more normal now that I've realized there's really no such thing, and that what you see on the surface isn't all there is, and that maybe the people I always envied because they seemed to have it all figured out, were just as lost and screwed-up as me, underneath it all.

A friend of mine said it really well - as we drove past a Victoria's Secret billboard, he pointed up to the model and said "You know, somewhere there's a man who's sick and tired of putting up with her shit."