So… I have to ask…just how stupid can one woman be?  I mean, how on earth do you get to be my age and still be so damn clueless?  For Pete’s sake, it’s just pathetic.

So… here’s how it goes… The other day I went to the coffee shop I always go to before I go into work.  And for probably the first time in my life, I was aware of men checking me out.  Note the use of the plural.  Three to be exact.  This absolutely floored me.  I have honestly never really noticed whether a man looks at me or not… and certainly never tried to interpret what they may or may not think of me.  I’ve always just assumed I was there.  You know, part of the background.

Now… if that isn’t bad enough…  I was telling a couple people about this… that I was amazed… and what an ego boost to have a guy notice me.  Now this was a day or so ago.  And it took until just now… just this evening, probably nearly 36 hours past the event and all of a sudden in dawns on me…

I’m the only one who found this particular event to be notable.  No one else seemed to be at all… anything… by the fact that a guy would notice me.  The attitude was one of, “yeah, and?”

I have a friend… one who’s told me he thinks I’m attractive…  he said… when I expressed amazement that he, or anyone for that matter, would find me so… that I needed to be hit over the head with a “clue-by-four”.

He’s right.  I do.  Repeatedly, it seems.  Perhaps it’s amazing to me… but to not even realize that no one else would think it was surprising or care one way or the other… Good Christ, I’m stupid.  I mean maybe I still see that fat chick who isn’t all that attractive when I look in the mirror… maybe I see me, in the mirror, pictures, whatever and cringe… But to have no bloody clue that others might not see the same self-perceived horrific flaws?  Damn.

I suppose this realization came (okay five hours after the fact) while talking with my TL about a co-worker whom he thinks finds me interesting.  I commented was it that obvious and I was the only one to dumb to see it and he laughed and nodded.  Oh, and by the way, this is the same TL who walked out with me the other day.  You know, the one I thought was likely being nice seeing as how my car was the only one in the lot?  He’s mentioned he thinks I’m not too bad.  Still puzzling over that one, too. 

Where I work… there are a lot of young people.  Twenties mostly, some single, several engaged.  There are a handful of older people, older than me, not by much in some cases and certainly not in attitude, but… a good ten to fifteen years ahead of me.  I don’t  know how many there are my age (and for those of you trying to figure it out, don’t bother.  I lied in my profile, that’s nowhere near my birthday.  It’s to keep my almost-ex-husband from finding this)  or roughly that, but most of them are married.  So, I don’t expect to be noticed.  I’m too old for the younger ones, the older ones that I’ve found are mostly women and the rest are married, male or female.  Pretty much anyway.  So why would anyone notice me?  (remember that clue-by-four?  Pass it this way, I need another whack)

My friend, my very special friend has been trying for over a year to get me to see myself better than my parents taught me.  It’s starting to work, at least in some ways.  But being found physically attractive?  That’s just such a foreign concept.  It really is hard to learn to accept it could be possible and not feel vain or like a fake of some sort.

I’m not ugly.  And I’m not fat anymore.  But… pretty?  Gorgeous?  Sexy?  Beautiful?  Hot?  He’s said all of these and it’s still well nigh on impossible to use those words to describe me, even in repeating something said to me.

That guy that asked me to dance, what was it two, three weeks ago.  Know what he said?  He said I was beautiful… he wanted to dance with me because I was so beautiful.  I couldn’t bring myself to say that to anyone… that some guy said that to me..  I could say he thought I was attractive… I could allow as how that would be possible.  But beautiful?  Hell, I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that he asked me to dance and it may well not have been a dare that he lost!

Why can I not do this… think of myself positively?  Why do the words stick in my throat?  I used to work for a store whose whole tagline was about sexy clothing for the young modern woman.  Business, casual, didn’t matter.  It was sexy.  It was impossible for me to reconcile the concept of being allowed, encouraged even, to dress sexy, to present yourself as sexy.

Do I want to be seen as sexy?  Hell, yeah.  Sexy and gorgeous and all of that.  In my fantasies, I’m the girl all the guys want.  Reality?  Yeah, that’s another story.  I look in the mirror and I don’t know what I see, but I don’t know that I’d describe myself with any of those words.

How in the hell do you learn who you are?