I'm A Bit of a Dick

You know how some people are just, like, lovely. And sweet and great to be around all the time? That's not me. Not even close.

It's not news to me that I can be a bit of a dick. Especially 8 wines in. But, it's only been recently that I've become really conscious of it. Or rather, the roots of it.

I have always been, to some extent, that girl that spends most of Sunday in a panic about what she said/did on Saturday night. Not because I slam tequila, vomit all over my friend's mum's bathroom and put on entirely improvised musicals about the QE2 topless - though that has happened once. More because, while I don't mean to be, well, mean... I can be, if I'm not thinking about it, utterly thoughtless.

I forget birthdays. I will not guard your drink if a good song comes on and I will possibly neglect to tell you there's spinach in your teeth because I didn't straight away and now I feel like it's too late.

That said, I will never leave without you, kiss a boy you like or refuse to help you find your other espadrille in the slush at the end of a foam party.

For the most part, in my younger days, I felt like my dickheadery seemed to be confined to being 'a little too drunk to have been useful/on the ball there' - and since overall I was an OK person outside of that, it was probably forgivable.

But then, after leaving behind the friends who'd known me back when I had a fringe to move across the world and start again, I found the morning-after anxiety about whether I'd been a dick or not was no longer confined to the morning after. It was now after every encounter, every conversation, every introduction. Because, if I'd been a been a dick then the person I was with might not like me. Might not be my friend. Might tell other people I was a dick and not to be my friend too. No friends would mean I'd be alone in this new foreign land with the partner I'd come with working away at sea for long stretches. I might die and no one would notice for days. It's a spiral this overthinking gig, what can I say?

As I got older, I would look back on the conversations I'd had and find phrases that could be interpreted differently. 'You don't think that Laura thought I mean 'Y' when I said 'X' do you?' I'd ask my bewildered husband. And despite his assurances, that no, he did not, I'd still have a kind of low level worry, a tightness in my chest, until I saw them again and they were totally fine with me. Apparently not having interpreted something I said in an entirely different way than it was meant and gotten the hump about it.

Yes, my general awareness of my dickhead tendencies definitely moved up a notch when I moved to Australia.

I talk too much and too loudly. While I do listen, my ability to retain information, including names, is dire. I can be competitive; especially if I feel judged. I hate to seem 'poor' so am unnecessarily extravagant.

I see now that some of this was a side effect of coming overland for 9 months and spending the best part of a year feeling like I was judged incredibly quickly on simply where I'd been of late by my fellow backpackers. All of whom seemed to be striving to be the most well travelled and worldly. But the beginnings of it had always been there...

Then, becoming a mum compounded everything further. All the new people you end up meeting as a result of the fact 6 month olds these days have social lives to rival a Kardashian, took it to the next level. As I found myself more and more around unfamiliar people who were very obviously better mums and more organised, capable and fabulous human beings than me, I felt even more shit about myself and what I said and did.

I saw their kids accept 'no' with the kind of shrug I might give if I'd dropped a single sprinkle from a 99, meanwhile my kids response to the same directive was more on a par with having a bird shit on said ice cream. Meltdown city. And just like that, from then on, not only did I have my own dickheadedness to consider, I had my kids dickheadery as well. Which was clearly nothing more than a reflection on me and mine. Did someone say minefield?

Now, I'm not entirely unaware that for the most part, we're all just struggling along and in every likelihood, no one is judging me and my kids half the time. OK, possibly even more than half the time. But tell that to my anxiety. Especially since I'm quite self aware and I do know, that I can definitely be a dick.

Take today for example. Yes, this very day. Right now, the morning I'm writing this. I met a very lovely nice new lady and I was a dick.

I talked way too much and I barely let her get a word in edgeways.

I answered the things she said (for example she was building a website) with things I'd done recently like that (added a linktree to my Insta bio - I know this is nothing in comparison, but it really is the only thing I've done even tech-related this side of 1997).

I told her how hard I'd found having a second - way more than double the work in my opinion - in response to her saying she found being a parent was full on.

When she told me about the book she was writing, I told her about mine. For ages. I didn't ask much for fear of seeming like a nosy prick... but I just came off as utterly disinterested.

I did social wrong. Again. It's a thing. I'm not brilliant at people. They scare me.

I know none of this is on a par with drowning her cat or anything, but I left feeling sad. I left feeling like I could, had I been better, have made a new friend. But I hadn't asked her for her number of added her on FB even though I'd have like to, because I figured she'd probably not want to get to know me. Because, in my haste to be liked and be seen as someone who 'was interesting' and 'worthy of her time', ironically, I was a selfish prick who dominated the conversation and therefore wasn't.

In my defence (and also because even though I know I can be a dick, I still don't want you to think I am) I had just come from the local pool and was looking a total mess. My kids were tired and scruffier than I was - the one that refuses to have a haircut had also refused to wear shoes and the other was covered in bark and dirt from the tree she'd just gotten herself stuck in on the way to the car. As I was in an area that I consider 'posher' than where I live and so the the fact we looked like three cast members from the stage show of 'Oliver' was unsettling me.

I was, sadly, already telling myself before I arrived that I was somehow less 'worthy' as a result of these random external factors. And the others that often bubble alongside them, like the whole no job thing and the fact I've hit my oversized Ute on so many posts and parked vehicles I now look like I've driven straight off a speedway track. Factors that I know better than to even consider as they do not, actually, impact upon me as a person and my value.

And yet.

So, why do I do this? Why do I let this shit worry me? Why am I a dick if I know better? As Maya Angelou said: when we know better, we do better. Again, and yet...

I can only conclude that this is who I am - and she can be a bit of a dick, especially in social situations. Which, leads me to the question, why do I have such a hard time accepting her?

It's not like I haven't come across people I've thought were a bit dicky, but I actually kinda like and have fun with. No one, after all, is perfect. And hell, maybe sometimes the person you're talking to doesn't really want to be asked a million questions or is legit interested in how you add a linktree to your Insta bio.

And, it's in that, I think, there's really growth...

Sure, I struggle to accept her because I am terrified you won't like me if I'm a dick.... and I know not being liked is hard, because once, a whole group of girls I went to school with and called my friends decided they didn't like me. Not for any reason at all. Simply, it was my turn to be the one on the outside. The one they didn't eat lunch with, choose for their rounders team, or invite to the gathering to get ready for the disco. A week or two passed and they did again and had 'decided to be my friend'. I was so grateful and so relived that I remember being told of this decision, vividly, even decades later. I remember, verbatim, what they said; what I said in reply. No mean feat for someone with the usual memory recall of Dory.

But there's more to it than that.

I am terrified I will do the wrong thing and upset you if I'm a dick. Because it's shit to be upset. It's shit to feel shit because of someone else. I HATE to be the one that does that. That causes that...

Recently, I made someone feel shit.

I didn't mean to. I just didn't behave in a way that fitted with what they wanted from me. But nor did I behave in a way that I feel was wrong. How I behaved, what I did; it sits OK with me. Doing what this person wanted of me, however noble it might have seemed in theory, wasn't the right call for me to make and I'm entirely sure, would have been a terrible call for the person who wanted me to make it too. So, no regrets there. You know, except feeling I made someone feel sad without even the opportunity to discuss it. Yeah, OK, regrets there. But not about my choices...

Which brings me back to being a dick.

I've strived so long and so hard not to be and I've beaten myself up about the occasions that I think I have been way more than the person (who actually may or may not have thought I was a dick anyway) would have... it's hard to accept it.

But now I see that even when I haven't been I've been rejected and even when I haven't been I've hurt people. So, it's probably time to just embrace it as part of who I am.

After all, those who never look back on anything and realise they've done anything dick-y are probably waaaaay bigger dicks anyway. Maybe knowing that you can be and striving to keep it in check is enough to make you just the right amount of dick. If I was perfect and got it right every time I'd probably be pretty hard to stomach too.

Maybe, when all is said and done, a dash of dick is actually desirable?