Dreams are like that dress. We hold our dreams close. We take them out and think about them. We work on them, tweak them, shine them up. And when we think we’re ready, we start sharing those dreams. With the people around us, our co-workers, our friends, the man on the street corner, the busboy at the restaurant. Sometimes we let our dreams fly a little too soon. Sometimes they needed a little more work, and our excitement got our left foot in front of our right foot and we tripped ourselves up. Sometimes, some dreams are better left unsaid, better left in the hands of those who made them come into being in the first place.

I’ve made choices based on finances. Choices I made because I told myself my bank account couldn’t handle a different path. The reality was most of those choices based on finances were made because I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my savings goals or my unwillingness to take out more loans.

I’ve made choices to stay in relationships long past the jump-ship point. Choices I made because I told myself it was better to be with someone than to be alone. Choices I made because I told myself they needed my help – as if I was the only person on the entire planet who had the ability to help them. Seriously, how narcissistic is that? The reality was that I chose to stay. Nobody forced me into it. The yellow-brick road didn’t stop.

I’ve made choices to live and to move. To take a job or keep on looking. To take the fork to the left or keep on going straight. To buy a microwave or do without. Choices, all of them choices, and almost none of them was my back scrunched into a corner. I felt like it – many times I have felt like a cold stone wall was digging into my shoulders as I faced down my decisions with a lone shot in my rifle. But in reality, I just wasn’t looking hard enough for extra shells, and I wasn’t looking in the right places.

Always…never…only…these are ultimatums, and ultimatums are dangerous. They’re also powerful which is why it’s easy to stumble into a choice that looks like a dead-end with nowhere to go. But nowhere to go? Come on, now, are you sure? Climb out of the box canyon. Dig a tunnel. Make a rope. How does that saying go?

I’m really good at the comparison game. Or really bad, depending on your view. I’m really good at it, because I compare a lot which is really bad. Physical attributes, cake-baking skills, house-cleaning habits, getting up from spills, hits on the funny meter, being neater, perhaps even a little sweeter. That’s just a short list – made infinitely shorter from the out-of-nowhere urge to rhyme.

I was born into the comparison game. I was not born with things like a set of bodacious ta-tas, an insatiable urge to clean my house twice a week or the gift of sitting around the campfire and telling funny stories. Which is fine, most of the time. Until I run into a situation where I find myself glancing down at my chest and wondering what it might be like to have Hells Canyon-type cleavage or wishing I could use my windows as a mirror for flossing my teeth or being able to wring laughs out of a group with no more effort than taking a breath. (Depending on who you are with that last one. If you’re a dead guy, then taking a breath is probably an almighty big effort. And with the second, if you have no teeth, then you probably don’t want a mirror-like window. And for the first, if you’re a man…I personally don’t think you should be desiring Hells Canyon cleavage.)

The comparison game is depressing for me. Rarely do I ever compare myself with someone where I might “win”. Which, if I did, I’d struggle with admitting that anyway, because who wants to be friends with someone who picks on the little guy while he’s down? You don’t step on people like that. Unless you accidentally don’t see them, because they just tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and you were too busy talking on your cell phone to notice. Hands-free is the way to be!

But also, who wants to be friends with the person who sets themselves up to lose? ALL the time. I just as well walk around with my finger and thumb in the shape of an L on my forehead (Song, anyone? Anyone??) Because you see, I never choose to compare something I’m okay with. I always pick something that I’m staggering along the cliff of insecurity with.

Comparisons are ridiculous. I always fall short, and I’m already quite short enough, thank you. I think it is human nature to compare. Our looks, our possessions, our families, our personalities – we compare, because of that whole keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ type thing.

Well. I don’t want to be like the Jones’. I want to be like me, all my imperfections and shortcomings to boot. So I’m not turning heads and I don’t have a clean house and I’m not stand-up comedian funny? Okay, that’s cool, I can deal. What I can’t deal with is feeling like I’m trying to mold myself into someone’s skin and doing things and pursuing ideals that don’t fit me simply because I came up short when I played the comparison game.