I am making my weekly pilgrimage to Target. A spiritual experience for me and many others for sure. Today is heavenly because I have no obligations until this afternoon, so I can stroll the aisles, leisurely.
Touching what I want to touch and pretending that I can decorate my house the way the displays are decorated. I decide that a good use of my time would be to explore the non-fiction book aisles as I plan to be displayed there some day. I rush over to the book section and imagine a book cover plastered with my mug, sitting next to Mindy Kaling or Tina Fey.
The thought of my words being together in a book, make me sweat with excitement. By the time I arrive at the books and magazine section and I am in a full flop sweat, I am filled with sudden and surprising anxiety. Every ounce of confidence I had before I stepped into the aisle has disappeared.I start to talk to myself in the worst way.

“Who do you think you are?”

“What the fuck?  You can’t write a book, you’re too stupid”

“You will never mean anything to anyone ever again.”

Wow! I am surprised how quickly my self hatred escalated. Boy when the mask falls it makes a loud thud. Now if anyone had said any of these words to my children I would have punched them in the gobbler, however they seem appropriate for myself.

As I wander down the book aisle it seems clear that any and everyone has written a book, not just a book, a “hauntingly, honest yet comedic triumph” of a book. I notice several of the Housewives have books, Surviver contestants have books, a fluffy Pomeranian named Boo has a book, they all seem oddly compelling.
All of these “truimphs” or books all feature overcoming adversity. I did not crack open Boo’s book but I am almost certain her tale includes waking up in a dog bed that she didnt recognize, a dog bed on the wrong side of the pound.

I am shook and I decide to leave this area and find my true love, candy corn. I am still in self-hatred mode but somehow okay with my mood. As I walk over to the Halloween aisle, which is really the back half of Target, I am dismayed at what I find. I look at the label and look again. It reads “No mess carving pumpkin” “What the fuck is this?” I say entirely too loud.

Since I am in a horrible mood anyway I decide to investigate this orange, plastic orb. I look to my left, then to my right, making sure no Starbucks moms with yellow haired tots are around, then jab my thumb nail directly into the belly of the pumpkin. I still have no idea what it’s made of but my thumb nail left a mark.

Still feeling dismayed and lost because I have convinced myself that I will never be published, my adversity is nothing compared to Boo’s and I suck as a writer, I decide to use my thumb nail for one more piece of destruction and open the plastic candy corn bag, right there in the candy corn aisle. Who cares? Right? I’m still going to pay for the goods.

I drag myself to the check out line and throw my bags of opened candy corn on the conveyer belt. Yes, I opened both bags and yes, I ate from both, my self hatred knows no bounds. For that reason, I avoid eye contact with the checker.

“Hi, did you find everything you needed today?”

“Yeah” I mumble.

“You look so familiar to me, are you a writer?”

“Ok, who paid you to say that?”

I look around waiting to see one of my friends lurking in a corner. She laughs and tells me she saw my blog through one of her Facebook friends, who happened to be one of my Facebook friends. She then procedes to tell me that I am funny and she can relate to the fuckery that is being single (my word not hers).

I confirm to her that everything I write about has indeed happened and she tells me,

“You’re funny, you should write a book!”

“Ya think?” I say so casually, it almost hurts.

“Totes!”

We finish up our transaction and I begin to float. My feet no longer touch the ground, my head struggles to fit through the door because I am now FAMOUS.

Now while I don’t recommend you get your self-worth or validation from an outside source, it’s always a wonderful and worthy cause to better yourself through self-reflection and therapy, digging deep to discover the reasons why you feel unworthy of success. But some days, outside adulation is all you got.