You Must Be This Tall…

I still haven’t submitted my photos to the “real people” modeling agencies that my friend suggested to me after seeing some of my photos from my October photo shoot with a friend. Or sent the hard copy photos to the modeling scout who saw me while I was busking in Union Square on Black Friday.

This morning, I was querying why I haven’t done these simple, low risk tasks, though they’ve been on my internal and external to-do lists for months. The answer was simple: I’m afraid I’m not good enough.

When I first stopped drinking, I read this memoir by a guy who’d also stopped drinking. In explaining why he drank the way he did, he writes, and in explaining why I drank the way I did, I quote: "I always felt one drink behind—One drink behind being funny enough; one drink behind being smart enough, cool enough, attractive enough." One drink behind being good enough, in essence. So there always had to be one more drink, then; and after that, oblivion.

It’s ridiculous, however, to think that I’m not “good enough” somehow to submit photos to professional agencies of myself, I wrote to myself this morning, because that’s like saying, I’m not tall enough to ride a roller coaster. That I walk up to the measuring stick in front of the ride, and the sign with the painted finger points to five feet tall. ... I am 6 feet tall. But I tell myself, I convince myself, that I’m not tall enough. I’m not yet enough to ride this ride.

It’s absurd. But it’s the truth of how I (sometimes) interpret myself in the world.

Many years ago, I wrote a poem that included the line: [Fear], you Nancy Kerrigan my knees before I even stand up. (Or something like that.) That fear takes me out before I even have a chance to try. I wrote that so many years ago. And fear continues to pull a Tanya Harding on me.

I am pretty sure that the only cure for this, let’s call it, personality dysmorphia (like anorexics have body dysmorphia – seeing flaws and fat that aren’t at all there) – the only cure for this is self-esteem, self-care, and just walking through the fears anyway.

To walk up to the measuring stick at the roller coaster, see that this ride is actually accepting me, and walk onto it. – The ride is Life, if you haven’t figured that out.

I am enough. I am healed enough, sane enough, funny enough, smart enough, pretty enough, engaging enough, lovable enough to participate in life, to have relationships, to have valuable friendships, to throw my photos into the hat, to show up to auditions, to even show up to musical auditions. I am enough to have this, to be this.

Because, I am six feet tall, by god! – And I want to ride.