I am a teenage girl. With that label come certain challenges. Some are rather trivial, like having a traveling Jackson Pollock exhibit of zits on my face. Others are significantly more debilitating, like being agonizingly insecure.
Insecure. The word carries certain connotations. It brings with it that John Hughes/Molly Ringwald trademarked plight of the tragically overlooked, yet brilliant girl waiting for her moment in the limelight.
From my personal experience, as a human female, insecurity likes to take the form of a friend, a genuine confidante. This friend has your best interests at heart and would like to save you the shame of exposing your inadequacies to the world. She provides a compelling voice of reason. She will describe the millions of ways you can fail and how ignominious any attempts to do anything would be. She’s incredibly persuasive and hard to get rid of because she’s just so darn logical. She is my alter ego.
No one can succeed in life with this plus-one accompanying them. So, if I know this, why is it so hard to get rid of her?
Because a part of me can’t prove her right or wrong. How can I know for certain that my efforts aren’t in vain? Without the divination skills to see whether or not I have the aptitude to be successful, I only feel safe having one toe in the water, creating the most minute of waves and hoping for a tsunami.
What I needed was a shepherd and I found one in a man most people associate with feelings of extreme nausea and constipation. I found my messiah in Donald Trump and his terrific, smart, classy, huge read: The Art of the Deal.
As per my usual Saturday tradition, I was exercising extreme diligence in doing anything except my assignments. It was by chance that I stumbled upon a copy of The Art of the Deal tucked away on a shelf. This was obviously an archaic purchase from a time when Donald Trump was just that guy from Celebrity Apprentice and not the antichrist.
A devout liberal, I turned it over in my hands and pondered what to do with this sacrilegious text. It was dense, with a thick spine that enwrapped almost 400 pages. I stopped short and decided to indulge in some blasphemy — I looked it over.
I knew without reading it the book carried no weight; it was the desperate attempt of some poor ghost writer to make sense of the ramblings of a clueless charlatan. But as I started to analyze it, I felt something I had never felt for Donald Trump: respect.
Here was a man with nothing to offer the world, attempting to distribute his “knowledge.” I, on the other hand, shamefacedly show up to my tutorial group each week and apologize to my peers for forcing them to read my writing.
I revered the cover, which he boldly decided to emblazon with his own face, a face only a European model attempting to get a green card and a couple of million dollars could love. In stark contrast, I can safely say there is not a single current photo of me that I would allow to be used in my missing persons posters, if I were to disappear.
And yet, here was a man, with a distinct resemblance to a squash that has been shrivelled in the oven at high temperatures, proudly placing his photo right on the cover! I analyzed this picture at length to see if I was missing that sultry, striking quality one would presumably have if they feel confident publicly ranking the appearance of women. His eyes, although the internet assures me are blue, were two black pits. I thought by squinting and changing angles I could see those opulent sapphires. I gazed at his oblong face, that was tinted just a whisper too orange to pass for any known human skin type. His neck and chin seemed to amalgamate. His hair was the colour of a rusty penny, gleaming from the pits of a sewer, with a texture that seemed optimal for scrubbing food from dishes.
It was at this moment that I developed a love for Donald Trump. A love that no Nazi or white supremacist could rival.
I was previously under the delusion that in order to succeed, in addition to hard work and talent, you needed some intrinsic redeemable quality. Nope.
Donald Trump stands at the helm of the most powerful ship that is the United States of America. He wakes up every morning and does a job he does not have the experience, intelligence, gravitas, temperament and morality for. How does he do it? He believes in himself — his hollow, vapid self.
The Art of the Deal is not an educational text. Please, I beg you, do not read it. Life is far too short. Instead, The Art of the Deal is a beacon of hope for those who doubt their abilities and their self worth. You do not need to resemble a Greek God to conduct yourself with the confidence of one. You do not need to be informed or educated to speak and educate others. The only thing you need is confidence (and a good ghost writer). Furthermore, this confidence doesn’t even have to be rooted in merits or abilities, you just have to be.
Even as I write this piece, I can feel that “friend” of insecurity trying to save me the shame of submitting it. Begging me not to force my editor to read this garbage that will blind him and put him in a coma. Not to expose innocent readers to my attempt at using grammar.
Unfortunately for all of you, I can no longer hear that voice. Instead, I can only hear my messiah, reassuring me that I’m a ‘nice student’, I ‘do very well’, I’m a ‘very intelligent person’ and I have the ‘best words’.
With The Art of the Deal to sustain me as proof of my Lord and the feats possible via his teachings, there is no wall that can hinder me now.