Tuesday
December 9, 2014
Papering over
Tony passed his phone
around. "This scares me," Tony
said, showing the group a picture of an obese man with the watery eyes and the broken
veins of a late stage alcoholic. "I
love my dad to death, but I don't want to look like him."
"I know what you
mean," Kim said. She showed the
group a picture of her mother. "Her face is tight from a million bucks
spent on lifts and tucks. Five times a
year she gets these $15,000 skin treatments in Zurich. They don't do much good because she spends
most of her time drunk, sunning herself on a beach. She's wearing an expensive wig because her
diet pills make her hair brittle. She thinks the money makes her look good, but
she's just papering over her problems."
"What does
papering over mean?" Seal asked.
Martell answered.
"It means fooling yourself into believing you've hidden your faults. Comes from back in the day when a tradesman
might try to cover shoddy workmanship with wallpaper. Couldn't be done. The paper Kim's mom is trying to use is
dollar bills, but it's the same principle. Have to tear down the old and rebuild things
right because no amount of paper will cover the flaws."
Today I will remember most faults can't be
papered over.
Relapse Prevention Group © 2014 by Ken Montrose
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