I said that I felt like I was a peanut butter m&m, but instead of peanut butter inside I was filled with mud. Most people just have nice little licks of my candy coating and they think I am just great. But when I live with them, soon the candy coating wears off and they are left with the mud which they proceed to spit out.
Yes, said Esta. There is candy coating. There is muck beneath that. But underneath that muck is the real Emily. The Emily who makes hard decisions. The Emily who writes books.
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I’ve been reading my old diaries lately. Above is something I wrote when my landlords kept getting fed up with me, and I had to come to grips with the fact that not everyone was always going to like me.
Below is a story from my Bridgewater College days that made me laugh.
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I trudged back towards my car, hood up, head down, sick and miserable. Then I heard a voice say, what sounded like, “why are you looking down?”
I looked up. There was Adam. He said, “are you okay?”
“I’m just kind of feeling sick,” I said.
“Huh?” said Adam, like I was an idiot.
I floundered around, not sure how to reply to that. Then he said, “I couldn’t hear you.”
“Oh. I said I was feeling sick.” I gave a shaky laugh. “When you said ‘huh’ I thought you meant, ‘ how on earth could you think you’re feeling sick?'”
“Wow, how could you get all that out of one syllable?” He asked.
I shrugged. “I’m a girl?”
In any case, we talked a bit about me feeling ill. And he said, “yeah, you look like crap. I’m one of the few guys who would actually tell you that.”
What a funny thing to say.
What an Adam like thing to say!
The Girl in the Red Rubber Boots 