"She's found another friend instead of me."
The other day I saw my daughter question something about herself for the first time…
Darling, Me And My Million Flaws:
I think a lot, and I’m incredibly flawed. I drink, I smoke – sometimes. I’m unreliable, annoying, I’m always late. I’ve been told that I’m a drama queen, a pushover, crazy, absent, manipulative, jealous, insecure, controlling, forgetful. They say that I interrupt too much and that I’m too loud. I know I have been all of these things, and I know of even more things I have been and things I am, too many to list.
I find it quite interesting that people have never been at all shy about pointing out my so-called flaws. In fact in 2006, my answering machine message was “Clare’s complaint department, please leave a message.” My sister in particular gets quite cross at me quite often. You’d think, that after twenty years of being late, that she’d stop complaining about it, but no. I make an enormous amount of mistakes, on a daily basis. I was still being told to write apology letters at the age of 26 -I worked in a pub, a concoction of obnoxious customers, a foul-tempered me and a power-loving manger. I have been sacked from almost every job I’ve ever had and rejected by every publisher I have ever written to.
But what if our flaws were just the other side of our strengths, like coins..?
I wrote Eternal Inka because she poses the question of being who she is, and the reason she poses the question, is because of the ‘thoughts of others’.
*It then took me over ten years to summon the courage to release this very book.
Are we good enough to continue to be ourselves? Is one choice of lifestyle necessarily “better” than another? In what ways do we judge people for making different choices to us? And in the face of a world that pits friend against friend, comparing ourselves to each other in the hope that we are “better”, doesn’t this deprive us of the one thing we truly need… could that be each other?
In my onion. I mean, in my opinion. I don’y know. I’d like to know what you think, I’ll meet you at EVERYTHING-WORLD one day…
