Thank You, ____. (You Know Who You Are)

Thank you to the guy in front of me today, who rolled down his car window, leaned his thick gray head out of it, and spat on the highway.

Thank you to the guy across from me at dinner last week, who ate his hearty meal in less time than it took the guy in front of me today to roll down his car window, lean his head out, and spit on the highway.

Thank you naysayers, critics, doubters and all the people throughout a lifetime who insisted with such vigor, such vituperative language, such sureness of doubt that it couldn’t be done, wasn’t good enough, was silly, so terrible, so foolish, so harebrained that even an infant monkey could exceed that nadir of embarrassment. 

Thank you small townsfolk, red pickups, and mullets.

Thank you personal hand-holding judges who told me with such astonishing conviction that I am all the worst of all possible things they think they know I am from their easy chairs and scratchy glass canvases and limited experience of me.

Thank you to the driver who told me I am number one.

Thank you to my superiors who couldn’t keep me busy enough to look busy, couldn’t control my fully customized-with-red-leather-interior office politics, couldn’t manage my overbearing crowd of ideas and energy.

Thank you to the men who bored me, screwed me, smothered me, teased me, wanted me, jumped me, insulted me, hit on me, freaked me, hurt me, cried over me, stalked me, threw keys at me, laughed at me, abandoned me, used me, spoiled me, cheated on me, and held my hair back while I barfed.

Thank you to those who think I’m stupid and find new ways to tell me so every day.

Thank you to the adults who have forgotten they are no longer teenagers. Who behave in a way consistent with their high school days of blonde perms, pleated skirts, gossip, pointing, laughing, poking, bossing, hair flipping, posturing insecurities and that unique brand of ripe-for-maturity self-doubt they call humor.

Thank you to the guy who thought my work sucked and wasn’t worthy of my salary.

Thank you to those who spent their time talking about me, what I was doing, what I said when, what I did, who I said what to and why, and what was wrong with it. 

You’ve all built me, just as others have been built by you.  You’ve been my catapult.  You’ve made the sweetness of accidentally contradicting you while sailing over you or casually strolling around you on the left enormously satisfying.  You’ve turned doubts into convictions, desires into realities, shoulds into ares.

You’ve also made it exceedingly easy for me to define exactly what I never want to be.