Living a Story

"All the darkness in the world cannot drown out the light of a single match."

I am in the Process

I am in the process of figuring out who I am.  I am in the process of reconnecting to myself.  When I was younger I was in survival mode.  I shut down, disconnected from myself, and just focused on getting through.  I have made it through.  I am adult now.  I have support now.  I am not alone.  And I feel like for the first time I have the space to discover who I am.  I have the space to discover what I like to do and I what I don’t like to do.  Who I want to be around and who I don’t want to be around.  For the first time, I have the space to be myself.  And the space to figure out what it looks like to be myself.

You see, I grew up in the spotlight.  I am the daughter of a pastor and I grew up with all eyes on me.  I was expected to act a certain way.  To think in a certain way and to have certain opinions and answers.  I was expected to be someone I wasn’t.  But I played the part.  I played the part to survive.  I perfected it actually.  Fooled everyone.  When I tell people now that I grew up feeling alone, isolated, and like no one knew me I am sometimes asked why I didn’t just let people know me.  I am sometimes asked since I felt so alone why I didn’t just let people in.  Why I didn’t tell anyone what I was really feeling.  It’s because I was trying to survive.  It’s because it wasn’t ok for the daughter of the pastor to be loud and inquisitive and confused and unsure.  They say it would have been ok.  They say I could have been myself.  But who I am does not fit the mold of who they wanted me to be.  Who they expected me to be.  And I knew that.  So I hid my true self.

Now that I am out of that atmosphere and environment I have the space to discover who I am.  I have the space to fall and mess up and for it to be ok.  I have the space to be confused and unsure and angry and inquisitive and to still be accepted.  This space is healing.  This acceptance is healing.  Who am I?  I am not entirely sure yet.  I am still figuring it out.  But I am learning that it is ok not to be perfect.  It is ok to mess up.  It is ok to trip and fall.  It is ok not to be who everyone wants me to be.  Is it scary?  Yes.  It is scary to put down my façade and the protective walls in my heart that helped me survive.  It is scary to let people into the broken, vulnerable parts of me.  It is scary, but it is healing.  It is saving me.  I am learning that there are people who want to know that part of me.  There are people who accept that part of me.  There are people who love that part of me.  Who am I?  I am still figuring that out.  But I have a place now where it is safe to figure that out.  Where there are people who are loving me through it.  I have a place now where I am accepted in my brokenness and imperfection.

Where Do I Belong?

Christmas is tomorrow.  Christmas.  I should be excited.  Christmas is something to look forward to.  But I am not looking forward to it.  I am actually kind of dreading it.  You see, I feel very different than my family.  I am very different.  And it makes it hard for me to be around them.  Because when I am around them I feel like I am very out of place.  I feel like I don’t belong.  I feel misunderstood.

You see, I am an extremely sensitive person.  I pick up on everything that is going on around me.  I feel things very deeply and am very affected by the energy of the people around me.  I get excited and I get upset and I have high highs and low lows.  And I am different than my family.  Does my family care about me?  Yes, they do.  I know that they do.  I know that I will never be left stranded on the streets with nowhere to go.  I know that I will never be in a hospital alone.  I know that if I am in a bind they will be there for me.  I know that they care about me.  But I still feel different from them.  I am still different.

This is something that is really hard for me to accept.  I do not want to be different.  I want to feel like I belong.  Like I fit in with the people whose same blood runs in my veins.  Because who am I if I don’t?  Is it ok that I am different?  Is it ok that I feel deeply and am extremely sensitive?  I used to think that it wasn’t.  I used to think that I needed to shut that part of myself down.  I tried to.  For years I tried to.  But my attempt to shut down some of the most important parts of me brought me very close to the edge of death.  Literally.

It is ok that I am different.  As much as it hurts me and makes me sad and upset, it is ok that I am different than my family.  It does not mean that there is anything wrong with me.  It does not mean that I shouldn’t exist.  It does not mean that I will never belong anywhere.  My family cares about me.  I will not shut down the most important parts of who I am so I feel like I fit in with them.  They may not ever understand me.  I may always feel out of place when I am around them.  But there are other people who understand me.  There are other people I feel like I belong with.  It may not be with the people whose same blood runs in my veins, but there is a place where I belong.