I stood stock-still, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror as a wave of pain came and went. 10 seconds, I counted. Only 10. A small miracle, I decided, as the memories of the last time I felt that deep burning in my stomach flashed in the back of my mind. A constant reminder that I’m a ticking time bomb. A constant reminder to be ready at all times, even though there’s no preparing for it. There’s no relief.
Will I survive the next time? Will I be carried out of my home in the hands of an EMT who will scroll on his phone in the ambulance as my eyelids flutter with my failing efforts to stay conscious? Will I once again dig my nails in my poor husband’s skin and beg for death?
How many times do I have to scream, until someone hears me?
Doctors have to hear it all day – the complaints, valid or not. Exaggerated or not. But I don’t ask for help. I don’t like to be a bother. My pain tolerance is high and my disdain for strangers prodding at me keeps me away from their prying hands…it took the little strength I had left, the loss of my pride, the primal desperation to survive despite my verbal pleas otherwise, to ask for help. But my quality of life is rapidly depleting and I have no more answers than the day I started asking questions. I can’t survive hearing “That’s normal,” ever again.
I wonder if I’ll still hear it as I’m lying on my deathbed. I wonder how long I can wait, helpless, for someone to listen long enough to fix me before I’m too far gone. I wonder if I’ll ever be healthy enough to manage normal things like keeping a tidy house and maintaining hobbies and having children. I wonder if it’s too late. I wonder when the constant pain, sickness, and exhaustion will drive me to insanity.
It’s been over a year of loss. My friends, family, my health. It’s been a painful, awful, lonely time in spite of the small joys in between. A lifetime of confusion and endless effort. I’ve thrown my hands to the sky and asked God, “What have I done so wrong?” with no reply. I still have faith, after everything. I still do, because I have so little else left. So I keep trying, despite myself. I take what I can get where I can get it and pray through the tears.
I pray to know what healthy feels like, I pray for a world that makes more sense, I pray for a more empathetic world, I pray to become the kind of person people want to keep around, I pray for those I have lost. I pray, because I need someone to hear me. Because it’s all there’s left to do.
There’s an episode of Golden Girls in which Dorothy goes to her doctor to figure out why she’s been sick. After coming up short, her doctor suggests that maybe she’s simply lonely. Maybe she’s sad because she’s divorced. Maybe her social life isn’t full enough. She says that she’s so exhausted she sometimes cannot speak, but this makes no difference to him. He reluctantly shoves her off to someone else who does the same. He belittles her, tells her she is simply getting old, and suggests trying out a new hair color or going on a cruise. He shames her for coming to him at all, comparing her symptoms to the outwardly extreme conditions of his other patients, like not being able to walk or swallow or breathe.
Dorothy eventually gets an answer and she gets to throw it in the face of the doctor who disregarded her. It’s a satisfying end to an all-too-relatable series of events.
I’ve been exhausted for as long as I can remember. I get days or hours here and there where I experience what I assume to be normal life for most people, but it always sends me into a depressive spiral because instead of enjoying those fleeting moments, I am all to aware of what life could be like and it’s so beautiful that I don’t know how to handle it. Everything is constantly drenched in a sort of fog, and those few lucid moments are like being awake for the first time. I know it will fade. The fog will keep coming back.
I was told that I needed to go to bed earlier, to get off my phone 30 minutes before laying down, to pray. I’ve always been addled with nightmares in the times where I can manage to sleep. I was told that life is hard and it’ll only get harder. Life was hard because I was quiet. I needed to socialize more. Join a club. Toughen up. Children were starving in Africa. Eat better. Practice gratefulness. Exercise more. I starved myself of nothing but leaves and bananas and peanut butter, then exercised every spare second I had. I worked on a farm. I volunteered at church. I worked with children. I worked at a library. I was a photographer. I went to a Christian college and studied English, like I’d always wanted. I couldn’t have anything wrong with me because I was so active. I looked so healthy. I was doing everything right. Worry less. Focus on myself more. Rest. Life was hard because I was in a new grade level, a new school, I was getting bullied, I started a job, I started college, I got a boyfriend, I got new friends, I started another job, and so on. It was normal, I was told. I would naturally adjust.
I never did. I got depressed, and somewhere along the way they put me on birth control. It was supposed to fix everything. Level me out. I subsequently turned into a suicidal zombie. I went from living in a fog, to being completely checked out of life.
I always mentioned my exhaustion to my doctors. I mentioned my most debilitating and consistent symptoms in hopes that it would eventually amount to some sort of a conclusion. I was typically met with a dismissive reply or told to try another brand of birth control pill. I wasn’t asked questions. I was too young to have anything truly wrong with me, so surely it was simply a phase I’d grow out of. It was just a bout of depression. But I’m 27 now, and though things have improved since refusing any more birth control, I am still living in that familiar fog. I still have lucid moments that make me cry. I have a steadily growing list of medical issues that I can’t bring myself to resolve because I have no trust that I will truly be heard. I believe, because it’s the only experience I’ve known, that I’ll be given the same generic advice that’s spouted to everyone else. Advice that I could, and did, get out of self-help books and Youtube.
I’m angry at all the years I spent half asleep. The youth I’ll never truly get to live because I was so busy trying to feel alive. To feel anything at all. The present and the future in which I may very well be stuck with no more clarity than I received up to the point I stopped asking for help.
I’m still exhausted, so I’ll be told to go to bed earlier and think happy thoughts to avoid the nightmares. I eat well and I’m active and still can’t lose weight, but have I tried cutting out dairy? Gluten? Red meat? Drink more water. I have a long list of foods that I can’t eat without getting sick, so maybe I just shouldn’t eat those things. My hair is falling out, so I should wash it less. Or more. Or cut it shorter. I’ve miscarried, but that’s normal. It’s time to move on. I was assaulted and therefore panic every time I go to the gynecologist, but I need to woman up. They’ll once again ask the room, “What’s wrong with her?” The walls will close in on me and I’ll forget how to breathe and I will leave prematurely. I live in daily fear of the next time a cyst ruptures, because I blacked out from the pain last time even though they’re “not supposed to hurt that bad.” Because I clawed at my husband and begged for help that wouldn’t come. Because I’ll just be told to take Tylenol next time, as if I can predict it. As if that does me any good.
It’s normal. Don’t worry, they’ll say. Everything is normal. Take birth control and come back in 6 weeks.
I don’t know when I will try again. Soon, I keep saying. Soon, because all I have are theories and fears and pain and I’m so, so tired. Soon, because I’m nearing the deciding age for having children. Soon, because I have a family I love and want to be around for. Soon, because I have no alternative. I know there is medical trauma awaiting me, and I don’t use that term lightly…but I’m terrified that I’ll subject myself to it just for it all to be in vain. That I won’t be heard or my theories will be wrong and that will be that. But I want to enjoy every second of my damn good life. I don’t want to be in constant fear. I don’t want to be too tired to do the things I love. I want to feel alive and be healthy enough to have kids. I want a body that doesn’t fail me at every turn and I want answers to a root cause rather than a temporary, surface-level reprieve.
Despite my experiences, I believe in nuance in everything. I don’t see all doctors as super villains to fear. I had one positive experience that keeps me from completely giving up. Doctors are obviously people, like everyone else. I don’t think every patient is a saint. I don’t even think I am an easy patient. My problems are complicated, I cry easily, I struggle to communicate, and I’m jaded. What I see is a profession filled with people so exhausted and jaded themselves, they can’t turn on the humanity when it’s needed. They can’t afford to care, because caring either hurts or wears them out further. I also believe there are doctors who choose the profession to be on a constant power trip, or they do the work so long that they get cocky. I believe there are good doctors, good patients, bad doctors, bad patients, and a whole lot of complicated in-betweens.
While I have empathy for the in-between and pray for better working conditions for the good, what I can advocate for is what I know and what I know is that medical mistrust is rampant. I know several people with medical trauma that was either wholly induced by or at least not helped by the people who were supposed to care for them. People who were supposed to either have answers or help find them. I’m absolutely not the worst case of this. It’s not just me. It’s not just fear. It’s a lack of trust in a world that has completely thrown empathy and consideration to the wayside.
When my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer last year, it was not like the movies portray it. She didn’t go to her annual check-up or have a sudden medical emergency and get told by a watery-eyed doctor that she has cancer. She had to fight for answers for precious months while she literally wasted away. While she got thin, lost all energy, and became forgetful. She was fading before our eyes and her doctor refused to take her seriously. Her doctor treated her like a nuisance. The hospital turned her away. She didn’t get to have a Dorothy moment. No one apologized when she was diagnosed. She simply started her treatment just in time to save her life.
Dorothy said it best:
“I came to you sick – sick and scared. And you dismissed me. You didn’t have the answer. Instead of saying, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with you,’ you made me feel crazy, like I had made it all up. You dismissed me. You made me feel like a child, a fool, a neurotic who was wasting your precious time. Is that your caring profession? Is that healing? No one deserves that kind of treatment, Dr. Budd, no one. Had I been a man, I might have been taken a little more seriously and not told to go to a hairdresser. […] I don’t know where you doctors lose your humanity, but you lose it. If all of you at the start of your career could get very sick and scared for a while, you’d probably learn more from that than anything else. You’d better start listening to your patients. They need to be heard. They need caring, they need compassion. They need attending to. Someday, Dr. Budd, you’re gonna be on the other side of the table, and as angry as I am, and as angry as I always will be, I still wish you a better doctor than you were to me.”
I would never go back to being 19, 20, 21…but I miss that girl sometimes.
That wasn’t some supreme version of myself. In fact, she was far worse. She had such little hope and wore a mask to hide it, but every small thing broke her. She didn’t know yet what was “wrong” with her, but she was in a constant state of trying. She was ambitious despite an innate exhaustion. Passionate beyond her means. Naïve in a world of not-so-common-to-her common sense, with no idea how to change it.
Despite being full of fear about “getting it wrong” (and unfortunately, “getting it wrong” so very often), she never held back in matters of expression. Love and art and all those things. It spilled out of her whether she wanted it to or not. She was misguided and so unfulfilled…and all that gave her an intense desire to prove something. To explain herself. To see the world in colors she couldn’t yet see. Had never seen, but had been told about. To say the things she could not express verbally. Didn’t have the safe place to do so. Didn’t have the understanding to handle it. So she lacked fear in art because it seemed safe. It was hers. It was self-controlled expression. Expression that was patient with her. It was worth something. No, it wasn’t always quality but there was something worthwhile about the unabashed excitement about it.
I didn’t care how or when or where or what I made – I just had to do it. I had to write, had to use my hands, had to take pictures of every mildly interesting thing, try my hand at every art form and be proud of it even when it kind of sucked. I posted everything everywhere just because it was fun. Because I wanted to. Because I could.
But I didn’t stay that age forever. I stopped being 19, and 20, and 21, and big things changed me. I collected all of my negative thoughts, all the negative things I’d been told, all the worst ways I failed at being a normal functioning member of society, and ran. In turn, I’ve found myself flung to the farthest end of the spectrum.
I still create because I have the innate desire to – need to – but nearly all of it is private (I recognize the irony, but it’s taken me months just to post this much). Everything gets worked to death because God forbid I put out something mediocre again…if I ever get brave enough to put anything substantial into the world at all. Am I still a good writer, if no one else knows it?
Of course I’ll do something with all of these unseen words because it’s always been the plan to be published, and I’ll keep the crafts along with everything else that’s less intrinsic to who I am close to the chest (because some hobbies simply don’t need to be monetized or even known to anyone else), but writing matters to me in a way nothing else ever will. And in spite of that deep-seated love for it, I experience an almost premature embarrassment about it no matter how proud of the actual work I am. No matter how much I genuinely think “This is exactly what I wanted it to be and I’ve given it the appropriate care in editing,” there is so much hesitation when it comes to letting anyone know a thing about me, to see any part of me, fictional or otherwise. Again, I’m aware of the irony…but as hard as sharing this is, somehow it’s less difficult than sharing the things I am truly proud of.
I have shared so much of myself and come up short, come out of it with less than what I started with, that the idea of trying again…I don’t know if I can keep trying to be seen and still end up misunderstood. Because therein lies the root of the issue: I am much less afraid to share my words than I am terrified to say something and then be seen as someone I am not. Or, someone I don’t see myself as.
So I’ve Rapunzel’ed myself, so to speak – locked far away to create and speak in solitude, because I have seen the outside world and I am terrified of it. Terrified of how I interact with it in what too-often seems to be all the wrong ways. Terrified of putting all my best efforts into something that is so important to me for it to be read in ways I could’ve never anticipated, like the many times my best efforts in other forms of communication elicited the same result. Terrified of how publicly mediocre I once was and believing I will be perceived that way forever.
I was once a 19 year old girl trying so damned hard, and it showed. Now I envy the communities she built out of that effort, minus the lackluster work that got her there.
I miss – crave – the online community I once had with other writers. I miss the ones I interacted with daily on WordPress. I miss Starbucks and writing every week with my longtime friend who always exchanged ideas with me. I miss my real-life blogging buddy who doesn’t write anymore. I miss all the things I’ll never get to experience in the same way again, because the world has changed. My world has changed. Friendships changed, the internet changed, so on and so forth. And so much of me has been shared, so much of me has gone missing over time, so much of me misunderstood or simply left a bad taste in my mouth, that every time I remember that I have to actually do something with my novels and my poetry books and my blog, I go on pretending that that part isn’t important. That it never will be.
And there’s this. This is so hard to write, because I don’t have a point. I don’t have a cute zinger planned for the end and a lesson to take away. I just have fears and feelings and a whole lot of words I don’t know what to do with. While she may have been toomuch, I’ll never truly be ashamed of my past self because I could use a little piece of her now.
I know a fear of being perceived is common among other creative people. Maybe my reasons and the experiences that got me here are hyper-specific, but I cannot imagine that oversharing shitty work and having long-held regrets about it is a unique problem. I just hope when I do get brave enough to publish, I won’t look back on this work with the same level of disdain. I hope that my efforts will be crafted carefully enough to be meaningful no matter how much time progresses.
I once found solace – refuge – in the love of my childhood. Allowed it to follow me into adulthood. The spark, though changed over and over again, is still there. A lifelong hyperfixation that brought about a sense of community, a sense of belonging, that I never could quite find anywhere else…not even in church, as frightening as it may be to admit aloud. There is nowhere on this earth that’s free from judgment, but the closest I’ve ever come is in Disney. My quirks may remain simple quirks, my insecurities seem so normal while surrounded by a whole array of differences, and people are generally so damn happy to be there that it’s palpable. Even while we’re all nearing heatstroke in the dead of summer, there’s a sense of comradery among the throngs of people everywhere you turn. People are softer in Disney. Tired, overwhelmed, excited. I get compliments on my weirdest outfits from people I’ll never see again, just because they want to. I can be social in the ways that come naturally, without condemnation. All the promises of church-life that I never really got to experience.
Call it blasphemy if you will, but it’s where I can be who God made me, unabashedly. It’s no secret to anyone who meets me that my love for Disney runs deep…hell, if the tattoos don’t give it away then it’s bound to come out in conversation soon enough. I fear I may be the epitome of the “Disney adult” stereotype on the outside, but I can’t bring myself to care enough to water down the passion. It’s been ingrained in me as long as I can remember, and it’ll always be a part of me in some way.
But this isn’t a story meant to justify a lifelong passion (or obsession, to be more accurate). It’s meant to say: I clearly care deeply about Disney, so naturally I have had a lot of memories made there. Most good, but even Disney can’t erase heartache. Not fully.
At 8, I was giggling as my Dad feigned dramatic fear over my erratic control of our flying carpet. At 14, my brother hovered over me in the wave pool to keep me safe. At 21, I held my friends’ hands in each of my own, moments before the first Tower of Terror drop – a drunken promise to face my fears.
My ex proposed to me at the Polynesian Resort during the Happily Ever After fireworks. A good idea, in theory, that would eventually lead to the emotional ruin of two of my all-time favorite things in the world. I spent the year after our breakup averting my eyes every time I boarded the ferry to Magic Kingdom, so I wouldn’t have to look at the place I’d once loved as I passed by, the hundred other memories in the exact same spot quickly replaced with one Big Bad Feeling. I felt like I was losing my mind the couple of times I didn’t get out of Magic Kingdom quickly enough, suddenly surrounded by ear-splitting banging and the ironic lyrics “Reach out and find your happily ever after.”
But, over time and through a lot of exposure therapy, those painful memories faded into unfortunate stains on the places I still loved. Temporary setbacks. Eventually, my now-husband took me to see the fireworks again. He sat with me on the beach of the Polynesian and we ate Dole Whips, and he reminded me that no one was allowed to take away any more of me than they already had. I had my dignity, my time, my sanity, my security, my safety, so much taken away. I felt pain I didn’t know existed. I did things I never thought I would. I spent months doing nothing but drinking and hating God for making me so blind. For not protecting me. For not letting me have anything left to enjoy. But I learned how to take what was stolen back, including the places I once enjoyed going; the things that had love woven into them by people other than my abuser.
The pain wasn’t linear – I will never be the same – but I can love the same things if I choose to. I don’t have to hate the things that brought me joy just because I shared them with the wrong person.
So I returned to Disney. I returned to the Polynesian. I watched the fireworks with my husband and cried, not because I was in pain, but because I couldn’t believe how happy I’d become. I didn’t think of the hurt anymore, not with the most important things. Those things became my things again and they, in turn, became our things. Mine and my husband. Magic Kingdom and the Polynesian and the fireworks and all of it were ours. I finally got to share what I love with someone who doesn’t simply tolerate it. Or me. (Cue TolerateIt by Taylor Swift).
We had our wedding there, at the Polynesian. I think some people thought I was weird for that, given the history, but it was fully ours by that point. I have dreamed of a princess-like moment at the Polynesian for my wedding since I was a child and no one, according to my husband, was going to ruin that. My ex called me a princess when he wanted to mock me for caring about anything, but my husband calls me Princess because he actually thinks I’m the embodiment of a real-life Disney princess. Ridiculous, yes, but so endearing. We got married by the banyan tree. We took over-the-top castle photos and I wore a ball gown and by the time the ceremony began, he’d already given me the most magical moments of my life. We changed out of our regalia, and had a laid-back day at the resort with family.
Weddings, by nature, are a disaster. No matter how simultaneously chill and meticulous of a bride you try to be, things will go wrong. No matter how kind and accommodating and open-minded you try to remain, you’ll be tested. Your feelings will get hurt. Family will be selfish, friends will show their true colors, and if you don’t have a good planner you may end up sitting in your mother’s car a half hour before the ceremony starts hysterically laughing because you don’t even know if they actually set the damn thing up. That’s a story for another time, but even with the difficulty, there will be good. There will be people who support you, who know your heart, who love you loudly. The person who loves you wholly, standing at the end of the aisle, is the best part of it all.
So much of our wedding day was pure chaos, even downright disaster. As grateful as I am for what we ended up with, and as much as I love Disney, I am in the majority of brides who walk out of the experience thinking “Damn, we should’ve just eloped.” Or, at the very least, wishing we could do it again knowing what we know now. But despite all that, I can’t look back at our wedding day and not be joyful.
Last week, I wanted to revisit that place. I wanted to go back and see it again, just because I can. If you’re a die-hard Disney fan or if you’ve been to the Polynesian recently, you may already know where I’m going with this. On our one year anniversary, we ate nachos at Captain Cook’s and shared a Dole Whip, just like on our wedding day, but it was late and we still had to drive home so all we did was eat and leave. I knew my yearly waterpark trip with my mom was coming up soon, and as our officiant, she wanted to revisit the big banyan tree as well, to relive the best parts of that day; to get sappy and sentimental and think about how much has changed.
Arm-in-arm we walked on the boardwalk, laughing and full of energy, when I turned the corner and all the joy got sucked out of the both of us. The beach, the alcove, the beautiful tree, was all dirt. Rubble. A grey slab of concrete in its place.
I knew the truth, I knew that mass of concrete was sitting right where I was headed, but I refused to accept it. Laughing, nervously at this point and probably looking like a lunatic, I picked up my pace until I found the pathway I’d walked only a year and a half ago, bouquet in hand. Construction noise, hard hats, go-away-green walls, and a very confused cast member stared at me as tears rolled down my face. My mother hugged me when I realized it was really gone; all of it turned to dust for the sake of another building we probably didn’t need.
After my abuser left, I couldn’t shake the thought that God was bored and I was His toy. That’s how it felt – that no matter how much right I tried to do or how much I praised Him, He was never going to let me keep a good thing. I haven’t had that thought in about a year, but I was reminded of that same twisting pain in my gut that day. I felt betrayed.
I know that I am not some special force for divine change. I know that God isn’t targeting me and only me, but that sense of betrayal is harder to fight than anyone prepares you for. No one signed off on this project with an evil grin saying, “I will destroy the place Gabrielle loves. She doesn’t deserve nice things!” I don’t think I deserve pity. I got married in Disney World to my favorite person, for Pete’s sake. We have a house and life is good and I am finally content…I have no reason to believe anyone is out to get me. But that didn’t stop me from staring out at that construction site wondering why life isn’t ever simple, crying like a child, frozen in place.
It felt like a cosmic joke. It felt like my abuser won, in some way. I thought my husband and I had both been through enough for a lifetime…or at least a little while longer than this. Sometimes, you let your guard down and you’re once again unprepared for pain, despite telling yourself you’d never let it surprise you again. Sometimes, you just want a win. Sometimes, you’re tired. Sometimes, you want to feel like the things you love aren’t going to be inexplicably torn away from you.
Oh trust me, I know. I know it’s not a sign that everything I love gets ruined or that we don’t deserve nice things or even that God is an angry father figure I can’t seem to please. I tell myself I know these things, because logically I do. Trees get torn down everyday, especially in an ever-changing environment like Disney. It was a lesser-used half of a very popular and very expensive resort, and I even think the tree itself is getting moved to a different location. Times change, places change, we move on. “Keep moving forward,” as they say. But I’m a sucker for nostalgia, for both the greater history and my own. Some things deserve to be preserved. Maybe on a grander scale, this is not one of those things, but on a totally personal level it is. For every other couple who stood at that beautiful banyan tree, it is.
Maybe one of those couples got divorced and there’s a man or woman out there saying “Thank God, it’s gone.” I was surely happy to see the fireworks show get replaced for a couple years, despite the amount of sentimentality it must’ve held for others.
Maybe it doesn’t have to mean anything at all, to anyone. For now it does, to me if no one else. This feeling of loss and frustration is not unique, but it is extremely specific. In all honesty, I don’t know what to do with it. I’m not even sure what the point of talking about it is, but some things in life manage to turn a grown woman back into a little girl, crying over something insignificant, knowing deep down it’s not actually insignificant at all.
I don’t understand the rules of conversation. Things that are unspoken and how to leave things unspoken myself. Understanding others, generally. I’ve spent a lifetime studying, hyper-focusing, trying to mimic communication…and yet something is always a bit off. The ins-and-outs of what is acceptable and pleasant are unclear – always just out of reach. As I learn, something changes. Every situation new and unique and more confusing than the last.
I’m always in the push-and-pull game of seeking genuine connection, but unintentionally being terribly difficult to get to know. Being an open book in case someone takes the bait, while simultaneously being straight-laced and quiet.
My husband and I were just talking about this hard-to-explain phenomenon where, even when we seem to be on the same wavelength as those around us, so often is what we say still not “right.” Our honest efforts and bids for connection fall flat. We’ll fully digest everyone else’s words and formulate the kind of response we’d like to recieve. Yet, often, it still won’t land. The conversation falters, fades, pauses in a moment of their obvious “What do I say to that?”.
There’s a distinct memory of a time I was thrown into a lively group conversation where, as I sat awaiting my turn, I brewed a question that I was entirely certain would elicit a new wave of interesting commentary…but as I spoke, the energy changed. It got quiet. All eyes averted. No one knew how to answer…and that’s it. Conversation once again moved along just fine without me. Something that felt completely appropriate to the situation – something I was unreasonably excited to say and went on a whole mental journey with before vocally committing to it – was the only topic of them all that no one could figure out how to discuss.
I constantly crave fun conversation, and there I was – ashamed and unsure of how to handle such a wasted opportunity. A chance to be seen for the person inside that refuses to come out.
My misunderstanding of basic human nature isn’t fun. It’s not the manic-pixie-dream-girl, looks-hot-while-doing-something-silly, Ramona Flowers brand of non-conformity. I accidentally give people too many of my unfiltered thoughts, my brain shuts off at inconvenient times, and I stay up all night thinking about my friends secretly growing bored of me. My voice rises and falls in both volume and pitch as I tell stories I’ve likely told before. I replay my socially awkward moments on a loop and it never comes across as quirky, like I believed (hoped) maybe one day it would. I’m not Jessica Day, because this isn’t television and I’m not in a highlight reel. I’m, more often, an alien wearing a mask. If I pull it off, I am misunderstood. If I put it on, it’s glaringly visible.
Pang after pang of almost-connection, missed chances, frustration at what I lack. So I bend and break for a world that, mostly, doesn’t notice the effort.
Because it’s not for a lack of trying. The lyrics I got tattooed on my arm say it all: “I’ve never been a natural. All I do is try, try, try.” It’s like saying, “Please understand I’m not like this on purpose.” Either I’m blank-faced, or a try-hard. Desperate, even.
Desperate to be known as who I know I am.
And that’s the issue: I desire something intangible and illogical – something that comes wholly unnaturally to me. I’ve never been good at being interesting or funny or a conversationalist on command. I go silent when upset or nervous, while my head screams at me to be normal. There is so much pressure in trying to cultivate (and maintain) friendships, family connections, etc. So much pressure in the unsaid and disappointment in saying too much. Because I know it’s in there. I know who I am at home – who I am when I’m comfortable – and I’ve always envied people who are the same everywhere they go. Likable people who stand in a group as an equal, not someone small and uncertain with a lifetime of messing up and misunderstanding looming over them. They befriend coworkers, bosses, strangers, etc. with nonchalance, and if there’s a lack of confidence – it rarely shows. They know, in a lot of ways unbeknownst to me, how to work the system.
I adapt and mirror and do what I can to be, from the outside, naturally likable. Easygoing. A potential friend. And it’s worked plenty of times, but the illusion shatters rather quickly. The second I open my mouth, all the holes in my safety net start to show.
I had an ex tell me that I act like a robot. Stiff movements and structured sentences and whatnot. He would get frustrated that I didn’t know how to have fun his way. I wasn’t anything like his friends, and it got harder over time to face that reality. I didn’t understand their jokes or know how to jump into conversations that moved at a mile a minute; conversations that would go on with or without me. I cared about my special interest too much, embarrassed him socially, and couldn’t participate in the silly things people who are comfortable in relationships are supposed to do. I took these things to heart and I really tried to be more free. Force it. Be normal. More like people my age, for the first time. I really tried to let go and be more like him, because he had that overwhelmingly likable trait I couldn’t pinpoint. I wanted to be enough because, back then, I believed no one else would get that far with me. I believed that in order to be loved, I had to pretend to be someone else.
Thankfully, when I met my (now) husband, I realized I just had to be listened to. I needed someone to notice my efforts before my shortcomings. I needed someone to look at me in total earnest when I’d say “I don’t feel like a person,” and tell me “you are a person.” I don’t have to be interesting by someone else’s standards because I don’t have to try to be interesting. I can exist without having to put constant thought into it. I can ramble and he listens. Participates. Whether it’s about something entirely made-up, something unimportant in the grand scheme of things, or something completely beyond ourselves. I can be socially awkward with him by my side and he’ll squeeze my hand. We do “performance reports” for each other on our car rides home. And, something incredible to top it all off, I make him laugh. Genuinely.
Often, I crave a form of this in all (or, at least, more) areas of life. There’s a desire for a little more than regurgitated simple responses to my conversational bait, like “oh, interesting,” or the dreaded “that’s deep” that inevitably shuts down any further discussion on impact. I crave something bigger than simple pleasantries. It would be so fun to know I could fall off the deep end and expect a cozy landing because of an inherent understanding of honesty, openness, and the acceptance of a little fumbling.
It’s all unnecessarily complicated living in the world as it is.
To make myself clear, we’ve all had the introvert conversation shoved down our throats for years, and this isn’t that. The world could simply be a lot less divided with an ounce of open-mindedness. It’s not a divide between introvert and extrovert, man and woman, or any other harsh line between “right” and “wrong” that we’ve created – it’s people like me saying “I can’t function like you,” or “Your world is confusing,” and being met with some form of, “Have you considered trying harder?” Or, worse, a form of “Have you considered being more like me?” I did. Truly, I did.
I had years full of mask-wearing and performing to show for it. I did all the daily rituals and cared about what I was told to care about and tried every trick in the book fed to me by people who naturally excelled in neurotypical nature. It nearly killed me.
Societally, I’m tired of being the weird one for not inherently knowing how (or not having the patience) to navigate unspoken rules that were set in stone simply for the sake of being there – just to have something to do. Small talk is fine, but instead of it being a jumping-off point as intended, it’s too often a crutch. An exclusive boundary not to be crossed.
Conversationally, I’m tired of uncertainty and unfulfillment. I haven’t improved much in pretending, no, but I have improved in saying “my way is worthy too.” And that has, finally, started to get me somewhere substantial. When my walls collapsed, I realized my strengths – which is worth a whole lot more to me than being understood. I quite like the unmasked version of myself: still fumbling, but with forgiveness. Patience. Acceptance.
Gabrielle Mclean 