Different by design

As a child I had no idea that everyone was different by design.  I believed I was supposed to be a clone of who I thought my mother and grandmother were.  I thought the differences were flaws. 

It has taken me a long time to find myself hidden away in these flaws, because coming out of such a firmly established shell is not encouraged by most of the people I’ve known in my life.

No one ever stood on the sidelines and cheered for me.  Instead they held a carefully monitored checklist so I would know what needed changing and I tried to change those things.  I tried so desperately, because I knew the list holders were there out of love.

It’s a strange thing, this love that needs to bend and shape and control.  For a sensitive child it is a soul killer. 

I still often find myself feeling like a turtle scooped out of its shell.   My skin prickles with feelings, my eyes mist over at the drop of a hat, there is a knot in my throat and my heart sometimes feels like it is caught in a vise, but that is who I am.  

Learning to live with these things has taken me a long time.  Learning to accept and love them has taken even longer. 

I am who I am.  Not like most of the people I know and yet fundamentally the same in so many ways.  I want to be loved and appreciated, to know I bring joy to those I love, to believe that who I am has value in some way.

Shedding my self-loathing is immensely liberating, almost a third of me has disappeared, but it is a part I don’t miss at all!