One of the things that I had to work out in therapy, and I'm pretty much still working on - and newsflash, will be working on my entire life - is a feeling I've always had of not belonging. I am a different kind of person. What's new is that now I have accepted it and I am (mostly) at peace with it. I haven't always felt that way - it's really disheartening to always feel like an outsider, the one who isn't like the rest of the world, the one who isn't the way that everyone expects her to be.
I haven't ever followed the "traditional" path of anything. I've done things the hard way, the weird way, the different way. I never had a desire to be a secretary, working a 9-5 job in an office, with 2 kids and a young husband and we take 2 vacations a year. My husband would prefer that I have blonde hair, but he's got a dark haired wife who colors her hair darker and pulls the red hues out. I like to wear jeans and boots and buy most of my clothes at the thrift store - except my unders, those I do pay good money for, because I believe a woman should have good foundations that look attractive. I'd rather hang at the beach than a church, rather make a giant mess and have a ton of friends over than be in a quiet atmosphere. I have a big mouth and no filter. I argue. I like tattoos and piercings and most of my friends have both and are a bit rough around the edges. My big mouth gets me into trouble an awful lot, but you know where you stand with me. I'd rather know where I stand than have this constant pretense of surface pleasantness and backstabbing. I drive a big black truck, listen to loud music, dance like a fool, and laugh really, really loudly. In fact, my kids tell me I laugh like Cruella De Ville. (Try not to be hurt with a comment like that...)
well, you get it. I'm a mess. But I am who I am. I'm not a sweet, quiet, tiny, meek little person who doesn't take up space. I'm a space taker and a noise maker, and that's me. Acceptance is most of the battle, and I am accepting who I am. The hardest part is realizing that the people can't - or won't - accept me, all of me, and that it is their loss, and not mine, and actually internalizing that and not allowing myself to take it personally, when it happens. Gah, the not taking it personally is something I will always and forever be working on, because how can you learn to like yourself if other people don't? That's the conundrum, right there. When you feel like the parts of you that make you "you" are the parts of you that make the rest of the world uncomfortable, you have two choices - change those parts to make everyone else happy and yourself unhappy, or keep those parts and make yourself happy but know that there's a grouping out there who just won't like you.
That part sucks and is so, so hard, because when it happens, it's deeply personal and it's a wound that never heals. Someone is telling you that the parts of you that make you "you" are offensive to them and you need to change them so as to make yourself more tolerable to them.
I give everything I have and work as hard as a person possibly could. I help when I'm asked and often when I'm not, and I'm always, always ready to lend a hand. But because I'm different, I'm often ostracized or just thought less off because I'm not one of those societally similar people. I do something that is out of the typical and bam! That's it.
Realize that your ostracization and unkindness cuts.
I have decided that if someone is going to put me - or my decisions - down, that's their issue, not mine, Intellectually health and mentally strong people don't do that. Easier said than done, but it's my new resolution, a few months early, at any rate.
I am actually not sure where this post came from, to be honest. It's been brewing for quite a while, and I just - sat down and it spilled out. I'm tired of feeling bad about being different, and apologizing for the fact that I'm different. I'm me. I'm not going to change to suit anyone's idea of who I should be, not ever again, because it made me desperately unhappy and an Unhappy Carmen made some not so good choices.
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Want to read a fantastically accurate description of what depression feels like? Read this.