Ready for a good laugh? These are our family portraits, as drawn by Roenick.

Starting from the top left, moving clockwise, they are The Canadian, myself, my mom, and my dad. Obvious lesson? Never ask an 8-year-old to draw your portrait.

I have the picture of The Canadian as the caller ID for him on my phone. It has been there for months, and I still have a hard time answering when he calls because I’m laughing too hard to talk. My picture, on the other hand, doesn’t make me laugh because that double chin is a little too accurate for my liking.

They always say if you want an honest answer, to ask a child. That keeps playing on repeat in my head as I wonder if that’s how the rest of the world sees me. It’s all fun and games when it’s everyone else’s pictures, I mean come on, they’re hilarious. But mine? Not so much.

I’m sort of kidding, of course. I can’t help but laugh when I look at the way he drew me. I spend a lot of time worrying about the way I look, or at least the way I look to others, I’ll probably never be happy with myself. And it’s not just about appearance, it’s the way they view me in general that I’m constantly concerned with. What if I mess up? What if I do something wrong and they all laugh at me?

Guess what? I will mess up,  I will do something wrong and, yes, sometimes people will laugh at me. The important thing is that I can laugh along with them. Instead of fearing my mistakes, I want to learn to be okay with making them in the first place, learn from them what I can, and be able to sit back and have a healthy chortle (people just don’t use that word enough) over it all.

I’m finding that the more I write about my insecurities, the more I hear from others who struggle with the same issues. It’s funny how we’re all so worried that “everyone else” will find out we have the same problems as “everyone else”. I don’t know about you, but I say it’s time to come out of hiding and laugh about it all, together.