What you 'know' about yourself is wrong

Plus how I went semi sober

Hello, and thank you for reading The Honesty Box. I hope you’re enjoying the bank holiday weekend (if you’re UK-based).

Today, I’m writing about falling-down pop socks, feeling like a failure and reducing my booze intake.

About ten years ago, I went to a swanky business do at a members’ club above one of London’s most famous restaurants. It was held in a posh dining room where an ad agency was showing off its latest ‘thought leadership’ report and I had been invited as a journalist to potentially write about it.

The club was about 15 minutes on foot from where I was working, so I switched my smart shoes for trainers and walked down Charing Cross Road to the venue, carrying a Sainsbury’s bag containing my empty lunch box that still smelled of tuna, as well as my heels, which of course made a hole in the plastic and were sticking out by the time I reached the club.

Switching from trainers back to heels is always an issue for me on arriving at any meeting or event. I either do a sideways lean against a nearby building and bend over on one leg like a clumsy human flamingo trying to reach one shoe and then the other, grazing my shoulder down the wall in the process, or, if I’m lucky, find an outdoor café table to sit at.

This time it was complicated by the fact that both of the pop socks I was wearing (I have now, finally, graduated to bare legs) had gradually rolled down and were lounging around my ankles, just below the hem of my trousers, and somehow I found myself sitting on the stairs just inside the club’s entrance with my supermarket bag, heels and coat splayed around as I tried to pull my trousers and pop socks up, and then my trousers back down, and then swap shoes before anyone else arrived.

It was obvious that I was inferior and had therefore failed at life. I ‘knew’ that they knew all of this about me

After stuffing my trainers into the bag, I gave my detritus to the cloakroom attendant, took a deep breath and walked into the private dining room of the private members’ club above one of the city’s most famous restaurants, which was full of laughter and highlighted hair and men in suit jackets and jeans.

What went through my head was: these people are all rich and successful, they all have kids and mortgages and cars and jewellery, they’re all confident and great at presentations and get pedicures and play golf, and here I am in rolled-down pop socks and I can’t even afford to buy my own lunch. This spiralled further into: I have nothing to contribute, I’ll never fit in, I definitely can’t tell them about turning up with a Sainsbury’s bag. I’d better not say anything. I write for a living after all; I don’t have to talk.

Of course, these people were all strangers to me, and I had NO IDEA what was going on in their minds, or in their lives. What I did in a matter of minutes was make something up: that it was obvious that I was inferior and had therefore failed at life. I ‘knew’ that they knew all of this about me and were just entertaining my presence because I wrote for a magazine that might make their ad agency even more famous.

Now, I can better separate out facts from the meaning I give situations

I could have been honest and said I was feeling unprepared because my pop socks had fallen down but at least I didn’t have to do the flamingo lean that evening, and I was delighted to give my smelly lunchbox to someone else to look after, which could have been funny. Or, I could have appreciated a delicious and free dinner in plush surroundings with intelligent people and been curious about what they had to say.

I’m going to go deep here. I have a theory that one of my greatest unconscious (and sometimes conscious) fears is of being abandoned (you can read about how I felt this fear during the height of the pandemic). And in withdrawing at that dinner and making the assumption that I didn’t fit in, I went quiet, and stopped contributing, and in doing so was almost perpetuating that sense of alone-ness.

Now, at 44, I have ticked some of the boxes I desperately wanted to tick when I was in that private dining room a decade ago. Namely, that I have a mortgage and sometimes have pedicures. But, while I massively appreciate those things, what has really changed is that I can better separate out facts from the meaning I give situations, and I now have the confidence to be real when I feel intimidated. We all have beliefs about ourselves, sometimes quite negative ones, but next time you decide you ‘know’ something is true about yourself, maybe just gently question it.

I am still making my own lunch, but I am now proud of that.

Things I like

Alcohol avoidance

While we’re on the subject of me, here is a piece I wrote that got published last week on the Delish website about how I’ve cut down on drinking, or gone ‘semi-sober’. As a fully paid-up overthinker, going to the pub sometimes gets me in a spin about whether to drink or not, because I get a hangover after just one. I feel the need to over-explain my alcohol avoidance, or pretend I’m having a G&T when secretly I’m on the sparkling water, but I’m finally learning not to make a thing about it. Cheers!

Tan France and colourism

A friend recommended Tan France: Beauty and the Bleach, available on BBC iPlayer. It’s about how Tan, a fashion expert and TV presenter, grew up in a South Asian family in Yorkshire thinking he should lighten his skin to fit in. I am going to watch it this week.

Thank you to Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash for the photo that goes with this post on the desktop homepage.