On Becoming a Person

I remember the drab smell of sterility and chemically concocted desires as I obediently sat down at the age of ten to have someone wax my, never-before-realized-there-was-a-problem problematic to my mother, eyebrows. 

Two years later, the greeter, if that’s what you’d call it, at the modeling agency my mother paraded me into didn’t muster up a hello. Instead she said, “Wow! You have potential. All we have to do is get those teeth bleached…” She listed off a few other things, which I confusedly smiled at wondering if she was saying I was, or I wasn’t good enough to be what my mother needed me to be. 

Thousands of dollars of braces and a teeth bleaching later, the modeling jobs I did get, I wasn’t allowed (per my mother) to take off of school to take. I’m unclear as to what kind of work hours she was planning for a thirteen year old. 

Dermatology pills for my normal, yet imperfect, teenage skin, and the diet pills contradicted my binging on donuts at my night job in my moms favorite place to take me to breakfast, all the while telling me the roll that rested over my jeans was disgusting.

Puking wasn’t making me perfect, but it did give me the opportunity to control my own consequences with the shame of allowing myself to become that, out of control. 

I was always controlled. Always told I was “out of control.” Always told I was rebelling, when all I’d ever done was “try.” I tried so hard. 

When I was confused and vulnerable enough to ask for help, she’d scream at me that I wasn’t trying.

Eventually I just gave up. I became all the things she projected onto me. 

Within my first few months of college, my father emailed me sincerely, and on his own behalf per my fathers style, to say, “I can’t live alone with your mother. Would you considering coming home?”

So I did. Because that’s what good girls do. They try to fill all of the parts of their parents, their parents couldn’t fill for them. At least this way, they’re “connected” even if superficially connected to an image masking the non existent sentient being they’d needed as infants. At least it’s something.

Not only did I come home on his behalf, I formed myself an excuse to have to. 

My nose was constantly powdered white, and no, not with make up. I’d stopped shaving, bathing, or make-uping by that point because I never really did get, nor make, the point. 

My grades were “good” even though I never went to class, so in dependence, as a good girl should stay (even while she’s scolded to be independent), I told my mother about the severity of my drug use. I was called to go to rehab or come home. 

There was my out. She called me to come home, so I could save my father. Coming home left me with no excuses, and nothing to do, so I got a job, got a dog, and got knocked up fulfilling my mothers "you're going to get knocked up as a teenager" prophetic projection. Having a kid surely would give me a “reason” to need them the way they insisted I stayed needy on them while simultaneously rejecting my sense of need for the entirety of my life.

I too carry the, “If I’m not needed, I may as well be non-existent” paradigm that my mother lives by. The difference between us is I carry mine, and she buries hers. Mine has been unearthed, and hers, she delicately sits at the grave of to ensure it never comes out and “gets away with her” like her own father did.

Not only did he get away with many monstrous atrocities on a surface level, on a much deeper level, he got away with her, and as a young child, it was my sworn solemn duty, to get my mother back because indeed, I loved her my whole life, when she, she only loved me since the day I was born. Born-ness, wasn’t the only prerequisite to be loved in my lineage. The prerequisite was perfection, but every time perfect came, another layer void of imperfection would be pointed out.

My mission to bring my parents back into themselves so they could let in the deep love I always had for them, was obsessive on my part. I only wanted to be received, and not mis-shaped upon their reception, then, they could be with me long enough to let some love in. 

This mission became the obsession of my inner life, and transformed itself seamlessly into my life’s work after years of learning how to drop the obsession by stopping all of the “trying” I’d failed at making sense of. 

I had to direct the same sense of compassionate “saving” and loving without borders that I reserved for everyone else, in my own direction. Discernment isn’t easy for a person who’s been taught not to trust their own instincts.

“I don’t like it,” was met with, “sure you do.”

“I don’t know how” was met with, “if you weren’t so stupid, you’d figure it out.”

“I love you” was met with, “I love you too but…..____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________(and the list goes on). 

“I have a gift for you” was met with, “get that dirt out of my house!” 

Giving was met with rejection, so I gave compulsively in hopes of overriding this sense of rejection, which never did work. Anyone who was actually willing to take my goods, I felt I owed something to. Let that one sink in. 

Eventually, I had to turn all that giving I’d been doing, inward. To the place I wasn’t ever really allowed to look, because looking at oneself was considered “selfish” and “vain.” All the while, all eyes were constantly on me, spying the deficit that needed changing. 

Yesterday, my daughters orthodontist said, “You have a really nice smile.” I wanted to go on a tangent about how my mother paid good money to ensure this smile and that it even got me voted “nicest smile” for our high school senior superlatives which again was confusing because I hadn’t a clue who’d voted for me, deeming me “worthy” of such a prize. I just smiled because I knew what it was like to live in a world where eye contact was met with a scorning “what are you looking at?” and smiles were met with, “What are you so happy about?” equally as scorning.

“Thanks. I went through all of this as a teenager," I said.

“You must wear your retainer well,” he said.

“Actually! I don’t. I haven’t worn it in years.” 

“Oh, actually, I’m seeing that you could use invisalign for “this,” “ as he pointed to a top tooth of his, that my mouth isn’t ashamed to bear to the world.

“I’m good,” I said with a smile. He was confused. 

This eerily reminded me of the day before when my youngest daughter who very rarely brushes her teeth and I admittedly don’t push the issue lay in the dentist chair. After eyeing me in a professionally appropriate condescension about not using fluoride, and the “risks” of not using a preventative, she said, somewhat in shock, “Mom, she must be doing great brushing! She has no plaque. Does she ever eat sugar?” 

They want me to believe their poison is the medicine I’m missing which is a very familiar frequency to me. My unconventional views rattle the image that their tools of change by "exchanging" oneself for an image of perfection, are where my safety lies. 

“She does eat sugar sometimes,” I said. “She’s also still breastfed which I’m sure helps.” Her eyebrows went up, and her mouth stayed silent. My face, did the same.

You see, I learned very roughly, and very early that outside to inside beautification takes a more cost heavy toll than it’s worth. 

When someone sees my “external” need for repair, these days, I just notice. 

I notice the sickness of a society void of itself, trying to cut me down to size as to “not get to big for my britches” as my mother always warned, saying “only if I do this or that,” THEN, I’m allowed to fit in. Standing out is expected, but un-allowed.

I knew she always tried to “puff” me up as a beautiful bird she could launch into the world as her own, all the while tying my leg to an arm that I was supposed to be grateful that she self sacrificially, supported me on. 

I’m not easily “sold” in conventional arenas, as that arena is what I believe my parents sold my soul to, so they didn’t have to jump in the pit themselves. 

Them, watching from the audience, I was a lone wolf, thrown into an arena with other lone wolves to “fend for ourselves” in all of the times our “needing” them was too inconvenient. When they wanted to show us off though, we’d be shuffled up into the bleachers with them, worthy for only a second to relax before we were called “lazy” and thrown back in for their entertainment. 

I love my parents. With every fiber of all of me, I love them, and always have, with a deeper knowing of understanding why they did what they did, even when in all of their “reacting” they hadn’t a clue why they did what they did, nor that I was a pawn in their flip flop ways of reacting to having to touch life as it actually was. 

Lone wolves. I see you.

There’s a higher area, above where our parents watched us in the ring from, where we can rise above, the second we give ourselves permission to individuate from their hold (which inadvertently still holds us in our pitiful choices of life partners, or in the pitiful relationship we have with our connection to ourselves). 

Meet me there, where we can watch the whole thing for a minute, not as entertainment, but as resolve as to why they did what they did, so we can walk down to where they sit in the audience looking at us squirming under their reign, and walk them to a higher view where we can see them, squirming, terrified under their own reign, using us as a distraction from the sensations of actually being alive.

It’s not fair, and it’s not right, but it is.

To cut them down as they’ve done us, is more of the same, and it will be transferred down the number line of our lineage but with a new face. Without resolve, sadly, that face, will be ours. 

The orthodontist that tried to sell me on a deficiency of myself that I myself didn’t feel, is no different than my parents sitting in the audience as the fight of a lifetime would determined if I was strong enough to handle a seat sitting up in the bleachers looking down on the next round of weaklings coming in to be the next generation’s entertainment. I refused their audience, and I also refused the ring they promised if I could fight it out long enough in, would chisel my rough parts into the perfection of a ruby. 

You don’t have to be perfect. In our pursuit of perfection we’re left feeling like no-body. The body we hate, is a no-body. Our inner world is a no-body. Our job becomes a self imposed making of every one of the other no-body’s to feel like a someone so we don’t have to face our no-body-ishness, alone.

You don’t have to be perfect for them, but you do have to be a somebody to you. That’s why you’ve come.

When we stop cutting ourselves down to size, the size they wanted us to be, is when we ourselves, find out who the somebody is we’ve searched for all of our lives.

That somebody, is still with you. Even if you felt like they had forgotten and abandoned you, you are not forgotten, nor abandoned, as long as you yourself, don’t buy into their sad deficient story by believing you’re worthy only of abandonment and being forgotten. 

You’re allowed to be a somebody. That they didn't become a somebody to know what it’s like to actually “be” with somebody, is not our problem, but our answer is, to become the somebody they never got to be. Herein lies healing of lineages, and healing of lifetimes.