the women before me

The older I get the more I cannot help to notice how similar I am to all of the women that came before me. My Mother, my Grandma, and Aunts. An entire lineage of women I carry pieces of, whether I asked for them or not.

I think about being younger and all of the disagreements I’ve had with my own Mother. I remember how angry I was, how I felt completely disconnected and abandoned. For a long time I held on to this resentment. Then one day I was faced with, not the same circumstance but, the same choice. I wondered, what would my Mother do? I thought about it in that way because naturally, when we are faced with a hard decision we rely on what we have been taught or have seen. I got angry all over again, because I remembered a moment when she’d had that same choice in front of her. I don’t know that she ever saw choosing herself as an option.

Coming back to my own reality I understood how hard it is to do differently than you were shown. There are lessons we hear about but don’t get. There are ways people are that we disagree with. Then one day you are faced with a situation that eerily mirrors a feeling or choice someone before you had to make. It brings about a weird contradictory feeling. I understand but that doesn’t make it right. I empathize with you, but I am still deeply hurt. I carry it differently now that I have seen it from that perspective. I focus more on moving through the feeling rather than retaliation.

I want to make the different choice by choosing myself. I don’t know what that fully entails, but I am moving forward still. Often I wonder and try to write the correct thing to say to the lost girl who cannot bluntly ask for guidance and is looking for her place in the world. Knowing at my loneliest nobody could give me a word of advice that I felt resonated because ‘no one understood.’ I’d have been offended if anyone called me lost. I can come up with the right words to say but the truth is I needed to see what choosing yourself looked like. I would however say to not abandon yourself in the way you’ve been abandoned. Which isn’t easy to do.

What does your life look like when there is no reference point? I describe myself as both the scientist and the lab rat because it all has been a long journey of trial and error. I’ve worn many hats and I may not wear my failures but the lessons have all been cemented to my mind. Therefore I stand differently. I have gotten caught up in wanting to be accepted into a community, I’ve fallen into the building a family of my own trope. The loneliness didn’t make sense until I focused more on my own identity. Outside of trying to ‘correct’ the trauma and pain. Not all of us are prideful, but I am in the group of people that have refused my pain had anything to do with who I was. It never crossed my mind that my desires were masks for the desperate need to be accepted. I didn’t consider my sadness was grief or anger. I didn’t consider the anomalous feeling came from not having been chosen. When coming to concede this truth the only solution that did not leave me stuck was exploring my identity, learning what I need. The problem for me was, I did not know what I needed. I only knew I wanted to be embraced as I was and for the wrongs to be acknowledged. However depending on your circumstances, you cannot be granted with both unless it’s by your own hands.

I’ve never romanticized about having the most or being somebody important. If anything, I wanted my family. I’ve had a fear of being alone but obviously since, have found solace in my solitude. My 20s have felt less brutal the older I’ve gotten, what they say is true. My ‘birthday blues’ are never about getting older, I’m ready as fuck to be 30. What I have learned these last few years is to stop being ashamed of not knowing and anticipate how much of the world I get to see. That is the word of advice I would give that lost girl.

I wouldn’t be interested in psychology if I wasn’t so determined to understand my own brain. I wouldn’t have begun writing poetry if I wasn’t so quiet. These are a few things that I used to be ashamed of, today I believe these things are the most interesting things about me.

What ever shame you feel about yourself today, your circumstances or whatever it is you come from; may be the very thing that makes you feel confidently unique later down the line. Which is special in a world of uniformity.

Do not spend your 20s trying to fix someone else’s mistake or adopt a belief that came from trauma as your identity. Though it is all easier said than done, learn how to establish your own perception of who you are. Do not beat yourself up for not knowing. Do not succumb to your mistakes, learn from them and choose yourself anyway.

While I go through this journey there is one thing I have no confusion about. It is that somewhere in the world there is a young girl who feels the same desolation. She is searching for answers and I have to reach her, so she doesn’t hurt herself along the way looking in the wrong places.

To be an example of living rather than survival.