When I was growing up there were so many things I didn't like about myself.
I was short, I was overweight, I was pale, I wasn't good at sport. I felt different from other people. I saw the world differentIy. I felt like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle in the wrong box. I just wasn't the same.
Sometimes I tried to reshape myself, but this never worked. I always returned to my own odd jigsaw shape. I had to be me, everything else felt wrong. This feeling persisted through college. Sometimes it made me very unhappy and struggled with how I thought I should be versus how I truly was. The strange and wonderful thing was that some people enjoyed who I was, regardless of how I saw my imperfect edges and flaws.
Even though I didn't always fit the surrounding picture, I stayed in my own shape and struggled on. I came to see that the puzzle sometimes changed around me and I made the picture different and interesting. The copycat pieces were bland, less interesting. They were like the jigsaw pieces heaped on the side because they would fit anywhere in their undistinguishable sameness.
The flaws were adding to the puzzle of life around me. I liked the variations, the odd and unusual, the interesting and bright. I searched these out in others and revelled in their fascinating uniqueness. I appreciated my own 'imperfections' more until I realised they weren't flaws, they were true, vivid, essential pieces of the puzzle, the pieces that made the picture worth looking at. And now I saw the world in its infinite variation, the 'flaws' and 'imperfections' made it beautiful and amazing.
Almost ALL the pieces felt like they didn't fit, but they all had a place. No matter how each piece saw itself, it was part of the whole picture, essential and unique. The essence of connection was in realising it fit, even if it could not see how quite yet.
Be a part of the jigsaw,
Jane
aka Queen Babs
