I feel my cheeks heat up, and I force myself both to smile and to continue meeting her gaze.  “Yeah, I am,” I reply.  What the hell else am I supposed to say?  I am deeply, almost comically, shy.  Particularly in a situation like this, where I am judging myself constantly against women who are supposedly (superficially?) my “peers” — but they’re not.  Sure, we’re all moms.  Sure, we’re all members of a certain website.  But they’re infinitely more put-together, successful, and confident than I am.

I make small talk — wracking my brain for things to say — with her for a few minutes before, blessedly, the waiters start to deliver dinner to everyone and I excuse myself.  I’ve ordered a steak — the first time I’ve ordered a steak in many years, since I’ve just begun to eat beef again — but there’s no one to share this fact with.  They’re all talking with one another.

I look down at my plate and dig in.

The conversation all around me is raucous and happy, women laughing and joking with each other.  There are smiles everywhere — perfect smiles with perfect teeth surrounded by perfect glossy lips — and although I look around, waiting for an opening in a conversation that I can awkwardly thrust myself into, my smile is as thoroughly timid as I am.

And so I eat.

“Wow, that must be really tasty,” says the woman seated to my left.  A little cube of steak and half a pile of mashed potatoes are all that remains on my plate, whereas hers looks as though it’s barely been touched.

“It is,” I say quietly.  I’m desperately embarrassed that my nearly empty plate has been noticed and remarked upon.  I berate myself, silently, for being such a shitty conversationalist and a pig and for thinking that I should ever, ever attend a get-together like this.  “How is yours?”

When I see the pictures from this event, I break down in tears right in front of my computer.  I had so carefully considered my hair and makeup, and I even bought an adorable black dress to wear for it, and yet… I hate every single picture that I’m in.  I look cheap and unsophisticated.  I look fat, my skin looks shiny, my tight-lipped smile is uninviting, my hair is frizzy, and the camera’s flash reflects off my glasses.

More hurtfully, however, is the realization I come to as I look through the gallery of photos.  There are a few shots of me in a group with all of the attendees, and a few of me alone.  But there is not a single shot where a woman there grabbed me and said, “I need a picture with you!”  Not once during the night did I make enough of an impression on anyone that they wanted to capture a moment in time where we were together, smiling, arms around one another’s shoulders.

I don’t blame them.

I wouldn’t want a picture with me either.

I want to move beyond being this way.  I want to stop feeling so fucking inadequate as a human being and as an adult.  I feel like the only things I’ve accomplished in life are finding a husband and having a child, and while those are wonderful and I wouldn’t trade them for the world, having Maia has thrust the sharp, painful awareness of my own shortcomings into the forefront of my mind.  There is so very little in me for her to be proud of.  Her mother is a high school dropout.  A runaway.  A college student of one semester.  A part-time minimum wage retail worker.  A social misfit.

I don’t even know where to start.