Shingle reminds me what it felt like for someone to believe in me

I still remember getting the package in the mail. It was about 14 or 15 years ago and the package was from a girlfriend who lived in another state.

She had decided that I would be a great “life coach” and she had been encouraging me to pursue that as a new career. To dramatize the advice, she found a roofing shingle and made the sign you see above. It had a cord on the top with which I could hang it.

“It’s time for you to hang out your shingle as a life coach,” the note that came with it read.

I hadn’t seen this little shingle for a long time. I guess I didn’t even remember that I had it. But as I looked for something in a drawer stuffed with mementos from the past, I found it tonight. And just as it did when it arrived in the mail almost 15 years ago, it made me feel good about myself all over again.

I don’t have any interest in being a life coach. I have no idea whether I would be any good at it or not. I’ve always been able to give other people much better advice than I can follow myself, so maybe I’d be a natural. I don’t know. That’s not really the point.

Lydia believed in me — and that was more important than I know how to explain. It was probably more important to me than she ever realized. Maybe it was even more important to me than I allowed myself to realize at the time.

I just knew it made me feel very good about myself. And all these years later, I can’t help but remember with longing what it felt like to have someone who believed in me that much.

I’ve had a lot of people over the years who thought I could do great things. Many people have said they had high expectations of me and similar things. But this was different. This was absolute confidence in my abilities — across a range of things, to be honest — from a woman who I knew was brilliant and competent in her own right. I valued and respected what she thought.

She loved me — and she believed that I could do pretty much anything.

She believed I could make great films. We watched a lot of movies together and often loved the same films (and also hated others). Even after she was no longer in my life, there were times when she would send me something out of the blue showing a film success by someone who she considered less talented than I was. Her message was always the same: “You’re really talented. You can be as successful as you want to be.”

I haven’t had that in my life for a long time now. And I need it now.

I miss being loved. I miss having someone to direct my own love and affection toward. I miss having someone to talk with — about big things, small things, and everything in between.

But I miss the time when a beautiful and brilliant and competent woman evaluated me as a man and said, “I believe in you.”

This dirty old shingle that’s been stuck in a drawer for many years reminds me of what that feels like. And I really love the way it makes me feel. I really need to feel that all the time.