I’m on this club softball team with some of my friends in the city. It started out as a way to get to know each other, a way to say that we’re all new and scared and lonely and excited without actually having to say it. What started as a one-time thing became a year-round circus: softball, pickleball, basketball (I skipped that one), flag football (I should’ve skipped that one) and kickball. I do my best to join all of them because I 1) enjoy hanging out with my friends and 2) want to be Little Miss Super Involved. To set the scene for you, we’re currently about halfway through our softball season.
I’ve got one problem. I’m like, really, really bad. I’m not the kind of bad that’s cute and ingénue and coming-of-age. I’m the kind of bad that makes people close their eyes because they can’t bear to see how I’m going to mess it up this time. It’s really okay though because I’m emotionally mature and can work through sentiments of inadequacy with ease.
SIKE!
I take every mistake and brand it on my skin. I’m like this in other parts of my life, too. I misspeak, trip on my own feet, stumble over my words, forget people’s names, call them the wrong name, rinse, and repeat. It’s probably some hex I haven’t figured out how to cleanse off of myself. I’ll add sage to my Amazon cart.
You can probably tell from the endearing sincerity of my writing that I did indeed just come from a softball game in which I made every mistake in and off the book. I do play a really difficult position, however: catcher. The ball comes flying at you, like, all the time! And I’m supposed to catch every single one! It’s another impossible expectation placed on women.
There is a bright side, I presume, in all of this. Some prolonged Pintrest scrolling reminded me that mistakes are, and should be, the point. Usually, they’re also a lot of fun to make. I’ve authored a lot of mistakes in my life, and while some of them landed me flat on my butt, most of them led me to a real place of possibility: somewhere I could take all the best parts pf myself and try to make them fit together. Most of my mistakes made for stories I wouldn’t be able to replicate even if I tried. Jane Austen could never think up with some of the situations I’ve put myself in, although Sense and Sensibility could be metaphorical for something I’ve not yet found.
One of my friends made a really good point the other day. I was telling her how deeply and irrevocably I feel everything. I’m a sensitive person, so when the bad comes, it leaves a bruise. However, I have a hunch that I can feel the sunshine a little warmer on my skin that most. When the good comes, I feel it so deeply that it paves over the chips on my ego from mistakes long gone. Last night, I walked by two people watching the sun melt under the bridge, so I stopped to watch them for a few minutes. The way a little goodness lingers around me all the time feels like a promise, for something I’m not yet sure. “It’s a gift,” my friend said. “You are such a deeply emotional person and that is a gift. Embrace it.”
If the mistakes must come anyway, let them. It’s more fun when you let the rain hit you, anyway.
P.S. You should join our softball league! There’s an open position for the catcher.
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