A Series of Observations

“WHAT LESSON TOOK YOU THE LONGEST TO UNLEARN?“

It’s funny how people always say we will spend our entire lives learning. Learning about ourselves, others, life, you name it. What if we really spend our entire lives unlearning things about ourselves, others and life, which shapes our existence differently?

Regardless, somehow the answer to this question came easily to me.

I think the lesson that has taken me the longest to unlearn, and the lesson I will probably spend many more years unlearning is that it is ok to be too much for most people, because I am not like most people and I never will be.

I really am a front row, center stage sort of girl. I am intelligent, funny, talented, beautiful. I am kind, considerate, loyal, and honest. I am a million more things.

All these attributes I know to be true, but somewhere along the way, I began to put myself in a smaller and smaller box.

Maybe it was my parents fears for me coming through, old boyfriends or even ex-friends. Maybe it was my own fears that I was taking too seriously. Maybe everything to some degree.

Eventually I began to believe that there was something very wrong with me for wanting more in life, for expecting more from the people around me. People didn’t understand my desire to leave my hometown for something bigger, with more opportunities, even though I stayed home for college. People are both shocked and amazed by my persistent desire to see more of the world, experience more, as if to say, “what does any of that matter anyways?“

Even down to the way I dress, or want to dress, I should say. I have always had a way of being the semi-formal to everyones business casual. The MET Gala to everyone’s black tie formal. Does that make sense?

Somewhere along the way I began to believe that I had to fit in with everyone else, thinking this was just the cards I had been dealt. That resulted in me making myself smaller, so small that I felt as though I was standing in the wings of my own life, constantly waiting for the show to begin and wondering why I didn’t get the lead role.

Coaches never pushed me as much as I probably needed to be, and yet there were some people I wasn’t good enough to compete with, so I pushed myself, challenged myself, competed with myself. Even then I could only go so far.

And, somewhere along the way, pushing myself became pushing too hard. Having too many expectations. I had lost track of what box I was in and why, and as I realized how small my box had come, I was overwhelmed with the work I knew I would need to do to leave it all behind.

I was focusing so intently on what others thought of me, how they felt about me, I never stopped to even ask myself if what was happening in my life was what I wanted to happen.

I don’t blame these people anymore, truly I don’t. My parents did everything they could for me and continue to do so. Ex-boyfriends taught me so much about life and lost friends taught me even more.

It makes sense that my life happened the way that it did, I only wish that I had known all this sooner. The younger versions of me were so frustrated, confused, angry and anxious and I had no idea what was happening to me.

I am not like anyone else I know, that much I knew from the start. I simply had no idea that what made me different would be among my greatest strengths.

I learned that I would always be different from those that are nothing like me, and that is OK.

I learned that that is exactly how it is meant to be, and the rest will fall into place.

I gained self-awareness, finally, and used it to my advantage.

I unlearned how to be ashamed of who I was, so I could become who I love, and help others along the way.