Life

They say that life is a journey, a road we traverse on our way to becoming something special. I can’t say that I entirely agree with this sentiment. For me, it has always been a battle; and at times, an all out blood-bath of a vicious war.

I have always felt that I had to fight for a piece of that road to claim as my own. To be seen, to be heard, and to be taken seriously. It isn’t that my parents ignored me, quite the opposite, but as the middle child who always seemed to need ‘more’, I always felt like I had to fight. I was ‘too loud’, ‘too talkative’, ‘too emotional’...so I tried to learn not to be.

This bled out into life on the outside. Bubbly and outgoing was my means to being noticed, even if I was terrified and unsure on the inside. If everyone was going to stare at me, I was going to make sure I knew it was for my vibrance. However, I was incredibly awkward; trying to find a group of girls who would accept me proved impossible. They would snicker behind their hands at my expense, plan sleep-overs and not invite me and give the most terrible looks of disgust if I tried to join a conversation. A look I would become so familiar with, that I can recognize it before it is even fully formed to this day. Why are you talking to us? The ‘get away from me, peasant’ look.

I tried to be the best at everything; school, music, sports...I tried it all and excelled but instead of making friends, I was called a know-it-all, show-off and center-of-attention. I aimed to be kind and friendly to everyone, because I knew what it was like to be left out. Yet I remained an undesirable and the butt of the joke. Instead, I learned to fit into the space that I was permitted to occupy. I learned to be less, to say less and how to mold myself into whichever role I was ‘allowed’ and ‘expected’ to play in the dynamic of the ‘friendships’ I was able to build. The two or three friends I had at any given time were my lifeline. Eventually, they faded away as they grew and made closer connections with new friends, and they decided I didn’t fit anymore.

I had my first real group of girlfriends when I was 24.

I had been catapulted into another battle for a space I was ‘allowed’ to occupy. After nearly six years in a stifling, controlling marriage where I was shoved and squashed into a tiny space my big personality didn’t fit, I was finally free to figure out where I belonged in the world. And yet, I struggled. Behind the thin veil of humor I would shrug it off. You either love me or hate me, there is no in-between. I learned to hide my deepest self behind the mask I was expected to project. I had been so hurt by others up until this point that I learned to be numb on the outside, while that big personality with the tender heart of gold hid in the corner of my most private being, screaming in agony.

Change is difficult.

People always want you to remain the version of you that they are most comfortable with. This isn’t the person I know. What happened? You used to be so… Most people spend their early twenties figuring out who they are as an adult. I spent my early twenties as a mom. I tried to be what everyone else seemed to think a mom should be, but this ideal felt like a role I was playing for an audience. It took all my strength to not crumble when my marriage fell apart and so I learned, yet again to swallow my feelings, desires, and self. I trudged forward through the bellicostic minefield of divorce and learned to present myself as quiescent.

Fire isn’t quelled as easily as a well-practiced performer may make it seem.

It is true that I became even better at hiding. Emotion became weakness, another crevice for others to pry open and watch me bleed. So the battle became internal. If you never let them see you hurt, then they never hold the power. It is a false sense of power that you end up believing you hold. The ones who hurt you still wield it over you, able to cut you through to the bone, only they don’t know they have it. Instead you cry alone in the silence, the darkness your only comfort, feeling lost and broken.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

Externally I appeared vivacious, friendly, happy, and confident. Inside I was calculating, watching, decreasing myself according to the reactions of others, taking note of microaggressions; the back-handed compliments, the snide remarks veiled as jokes, emotional manipulations, all in an attempt to be accepted. If someone said I was ‘too talkative’ or ‘always had to be the center of attention’ then I offered less to a conversation, was less outgoing and tried to disappear in the crowd. This always backfired because then I would be accused of being ‘the center of attention’ because now everyone thought I was shy and needed to be brought out of my shell. A constant game of tug-o-war to appease others and ‘belong’ that left me unable to believe that I was good enough just as I was.

The role I played depended on the people I was with at the time. If I allowed the mask to slip, if I got too comfortable with people, then I would be swiftly kicked back into the space they had selected for me. I replaced the mask, swallowed the emotions, and listened to the recordings in my head that reminded me to ‘be less’, ‘need less’, ‘ask for nothing’. It became apparent to me that I was expected to be everything everyone else wanted or needed me to be for them, but I was delusional if I thought I’d ever get it in return. Instead, I learned to take whatever I got, because it was apparently all I was worth.

At 26 my world began to change. This wall I built around my heart had protected me in a way, preparing me for what was to come. This group of girlfriends started to chip away at that facade, and I started to find myself within this group. I was not ‘too much’ of anything. I started a relationship with a man who accepted my insecurities, and as I put it to him, “all the reasons why he shouldn’t want me”. His reply? “Is that it?”. His consistency and ability to see past the mask I put on gave me the hope and strength to keep moving forward. He didn’t make space in his life for me to make myself fit, he allowed me to take up as much space as I wanted. It has been 17 years since that relationship began and he still chooses me every day, even in the midst of all of this undoing.

This blood-spattered warzone of my journey is far from over. I have had to fight for every ounce of happiness along the way. Sometimes it has been nothing but a frayed thread I struggle to grasp and hoist myself out of the trenches, but I have always found that silver string of joy, no matter how small. At times I am amazed by how I have managed to pull that heart of gold back out of the mud, with all the dings and chips left behind by the cruelty of others, only to put it back into harm’s way again. Some might say it is a sign of weakness, to give of yourself to others, to try to find belonging when you know it is most likely futile. I disagree. It shows strength.

I am not unique in this willingness to face the front-line in the war-zone of life. There is nothing particularly special about me or my story thus far. There are so many who have wailed in lonely agony, broken and lost, then turned to the crowd with the mask firmly affixed to hide their true self and the pain.

The truth is, we walk this path of life and search for a place or for people with which to belong, without considering that those things don’t really exist independently. We have been told that they exist and so we keep seeking and trying to build it within the confines of the imagination and comfort of others. As dreamers and world-builders, the poets and writers of the world create spaces where we belong, failing to see that in order for us to belong with anyone else or in any place, we have to first battle through the remnants of the worlds and versions of ourselves that others have built and imagined.

We cannot belong until we allow ourselves to occupy the spaces inside ourselves without belittlement or diminishment. We cannot soar and find the warm glow of peace that comes with acceptance by making ourselves or others ‘less’.