An Interesting Thought
I have a lot of Facebook friends and sometimes I'll have a post or something that unexpectedly manages to get a response out of a number of them.
One of the more popular ones involve me going out, doing something or something new with my appearance. Understandable, since I'm a house mouse who doesn't have a traveler's soul and is in the middle of a new story I would like to get written up and finished. Can't say I'm the most outgoing and a lot of them seem to encourage my ventures out and about.
I have one friend who has a habit of dropping ... strong compliments that I don't know what to do with or feel comfortable about. When I think about it, he is encouraging towards his female friends but in a way I'm not used to having directed toward me.
I got a haircut yesterday from a different friend - which was a novel experience because I now apparently have a regular hairdresser? - and sure enough I got strong compliments from him again when I posted it.
This time, though, I came to the realization that he sees me in a way I do not see myself. I consider myself cute, but nothing really special. And if he sees something he likes, then others do, too. He's just more forward about it than I'm comfortable with.
I'm still not comfortable with strong positive stuff about me - especially if it's said to my face -, but it's different than a glowing review of one of my stories and I don't necessarily know why that is.
Maybe it's because I don't think about myself sometimes and get thrown for a loop every time someone points something out. I don't have a lot of positive experience with real life? Not many close friends?
I don't know how to feel about all of this, but I think it's something that a lot of us grapple with - those of us who aren't confident about ourselves or just don't see the stuff others can.
It reminds me of a White Collar idea that I'm still playing around with. Peter has to go out of town to the West Coast for whatever reason and comes back acting out of sorts. Neal finds out that Peter had gotten an anonymous note that told him he's beautiful and he's never thought that of himself because no one's ever told him.
- if you want to take the plot bunny you are welcome to because I keep wanting to turn it into a body worship thing for Neal to do and I'm not sure I can do it the way I want it done. I can read stuff like that but I'm not in the kind of mind space for writing it.
It's actually inspired by a picture of a note that a group of my friends like to circulate every so often, meant to be positive and uplifting and encouraging self-confidence, saying you are beautiful ❤️. I saw that one day and somehow started wondering what it would be like if someone actually gave me a note like that.
... I would blank out and get flustered, for one thing. Like the friend I told you about before saying those nice things about me. And I naturally thought about the fandom I would put that in - which was actually very easy because you don't actually have Peter centric stories in the WC fandom the way you would Elizabeth and especially Neal.
It's like, I know that we tend to think of Neal as beautiful and all these other things and I know that he's usually the insecure one about himself while Peter is more solid. But I would like a more confident Neal and an unexpectedly insecure Peter and that pretty much reflects my current mood right there.
Any takers?
But in regards to myself, I guess I'll have to get used to strong positive. I have people who are not afraid to put their opinions out there whether I'm comfortable with those opinions or not. I can't stop them. Maybe I'll even get used to them and maybe I'll be a little better for it.
Every person wants to know people like how they look. Not in a way that goes overboard, but in unexpected ways. Things that sound flirtatious might be truthful and you just ... struggle with that.
And that's okay.
We are entitled to accepting ourselves at our own pace. Some of us slower than others and that's okay, too.
*hugs*
One of the more popular ones involve me going out, doing something or something new with my appearance. Understandable, since I'm a house mouse who doesn't have a traveler's soul and is in the middle of a new story I would like to get written up and finished. Can't say I'm the most outgoing and a lot of them seem to encourage my ventures out and about.
I have one friend who has a habit of dropping ... strong compliments that I don't know what to do with or feel comfortable about. When I think about it, he is encouraging towards his female friends but in a way I'm not used to having directed toward me.
I got a haircut yesterday from a different friend - which was a novel experience because I now apparently have a regular hairdresser? - and sure enough I got strong compliments from him again when I posted it.
This time, though, I came to the realization that he sees me in a way I do not see myself. I consider myself cute, but nothing really special. And if he sees something he likes, then others do, too. He's just more forward about it than I'm comfortable with.
I'm still not comfortable with strong positive stuff about me - especially if it's said to my face -, but it's different than a glowing review of one of my stories and I don't necessarily know why that is.
Maybe it's because I don't think about myself sometimes and get thrown for a loop every time someone points something out. I don't have a lot of positive experience with real life? Not many close friends?
I don't know how to feel about all of this, but I think it's something that a lot of us grapple with - those of us who aren't confident about ourselves or just don't see the stuff others can.
It reminds me of a White Collar idea that I'm still playing around with. Peter has to go out of town to the West Coast for whatever reason and comes back acting out of sorts. Neal finds out that Peter had gotten an anonymous note that told him he's beautiful and he's never thought that of himself because no one's ever told him.
- if you want to take the plot bunny you are welcome to because I keep wanting to turn it into a body worship thing for Neal to do and I'm not sure I can do it the way I want it done. I can read stuff like that but I'm not in the kind of mind space for writing it.
It's actually inspired by a picture of a note that a group of my friends like to circulate every so often, meant to be positive and uplifting and encouraging self-confidence, saying you are beautiful ❤️. I saw that one day and somehow started wondering what it would be like if someone actually gave me a note like that.
... I would blank out and get flustered, for one thing. Like the friend I told you about before saying those nice things about me. And I naturally thought about the fandom I would put that in - which was actually very easy because you don't actually have Peter centric stories in the WC fandom the way you would Elizabeth and especially Neal.
It's like, I know that we tend to think of Neal as beautiful and all these other things and I know that he's usually the insecure one about himself while Peter is more solid. But I would like a more confident Neal and an unexpectedly insecure Peter and that pretty much reflects my current mood right there.
Any takers?
But in regards to myself, I guess I'll have to get used to strong positive. I have people who are not afraid to put their opinions out there whether I'm comfortable with those opinions or not. I can't stop them. Maybe I'll even get used to them and maybe I'll be a little better for it.
Every person wants to know people like how they look. Not in a way that goes overboard, but in unexpected ways. Things that sound flirtatious might be truthful and you just ... struggle with that.
And that's okay.
We are entitled to accepting ourselves at our own pace. Some of us slower than others and that's okay, too.
*hugs*