Un-Becoming

Quarantine Day Umpteen: It was just another Monday. Well, not your typical Monday. Unless your typical Monday includes an executive stay-at-home order from your governor because of a global pandemic. I sat at home scrolling on the Facebook (yes, THE Facebook) like the rest of my fellow detainees. Someone tagged me to a status with a hilarious joke and, instantly, I got an idea: What if I made this hypothetical joke a reality? So I staged a joke Facebook Live concert poking fun at the great Ms. Lauryn Hill's notorious tardiness. (I'm honestly a huge fan and I hope that she finds it humorous if she ever finds out about it.) With a hat, a mic stand, a guitar, and absolute silence I garnered approximately 4.8K viewers within about 2 hours. And while going somewhat viral is quite an experience, I was overwhelmed with the fact that, for the first time in a long time, I had just gone with a gut feeling without question. Sure, it may not sound like a monumental moment to you all. All I did was set up some props and leave my laptop idle for a few hours, right? On the surface, that may be. But this moment signified a breakthrough that was 20-some-odd years in the making.

I'm careful. I'm cautious. I do not take many risks. I'm calculated. Thorough. Analytical. In a completely sober and aware state, I make the soundest, most well-considered decisions a person could ever make. Very rarely do I go on a whim. If I haven't talked it through with every close person in my life then I don't do it. This is probably because I haven't trusted myself since before I can even remember. I have been conditioned by upbringing, developmental environments, peers, society, and the like to constantly question my thoughts and opinions. My ideas have always been challenged or scrutinized. My behaviors and natural tendencies have always been ridiculed. "That's the best you can do?" "You're too loud." "You're bossy." "You're too sensitive." "You need to lose weight." "You're too hairy." "Why would you do it that way? That's weird." "You'll never get a man acting like that." "Why can't you be like ____?" "She just needs some ____ so she'll stop being so mean." After years and years of this you begin to second-guess your very instincts, your very being. You believe that YOU are the problem. You no longer trust your thoughts and feelings because you've always been made to feel as though they are wrong.

During the Thanksgiving season of 2018 I found myself in the lowest place I've ever been. I had to take a long hard look at everything I'd gone through up until that moment. I surveyed my entire life; every situation I'd been in and every decision I made. Then I realized one thing: I have not been living my life for most of my life. Confusing, right? How can you live and not be living? But that is exactly how I had been operating for the longest time. Going off of other people's opinions and suggestions. Trying to fit in. Trying to appease my family and friends. Trying to live up to other people's images of me. I wasn't living my life. I was living projected versions of my life.

That had to end there. And so the work began.

I spent the better half of 2019 undoing, unlearning, un-becoming. I'd created this internet alter ego persona, but I couldn't hide behind her anymore. I had to get back to me. I decided to listen to my intuition. To trust my thoughts and feelings. To do what made me happy whether other people understood it or not. It didn't happen overnight. I still tossed ideas around. Used friends and family as sounding boards. Doubted myself. But I knew deep down that whatever decisions I made had to be my own. Some people understood. Some didn't. While I believe every decision I've made on this new journey has been the right one for me, some of them didn't come as easily as I hoped. But I just had to trust and stay the course. No matter how difficult it may have been in the thick of it, it always ended up being exactly what I needed. My faith in myself was restored. And on that stay-at-home ordered quarantine Monday I just...did. It just was what it was. I didn't stress about the outcome. I just went with what I felt and followed through. And if trusting a feeling about something so insignificant could result in such a huge response, imagine what will happen when I trust myself in bigger situations? I had an accompanying caption with the video, but it's actually applicable to my journey as well: Just wait..she's on her way.