That's not to suggest I don't have my biases or prejudices or that I am somehow immune from being judgmental of people. I wish I could say such a thing and keep a straight face, but the fact is I am no less capable of it than any of you. I guess that makes us even in that respect.
I've had friends and acquaintances who are gay, straight, bi, Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, handicapped or fully-functional, crazy and sane.
I also am keenly aware that we all come into every new relationship, plutonic or otherwise, with the baggage we carry from what our lives have been up to this moment in time. A theory I have is that we also hope that the people who we encounter going forward can accept that we are shouldering that baggage and not have it impact their overall view of who we are.
When I was a kid, I had a friend who suffered from spina bifida which left her paralyzed from the waist down, and one night she shared with me some of the more embarrassing aspects of what such a life entails, all the while completely horrified that I would be so repulsed by her revelations that I would no longer want to be associated with her.
When she finished, I responded with a a single word. "So?"
I was working at a local mall in my early 20's when one day, an old friend from high school came into my shop to check out some movies. Naturally, we started chatting about other people we knew and when one particular name came up, she asked me, "Have you heard what happened to her?"
Not having the slightest clue what she was insinuating, I told her as much, hoping I would be told something other than our mutual friend was dead, horribly maimed, or rotting in a Hungarian prison.
What I got instead was told to me in rather terse whisper as to apparently not alarm anyone else in the store, "...she's a lesbian!!"
Now I'm pretty sure those other customers had to wonder what I found to be so funny when I started laughing like I did, because it was truly one of those moments you can't script, especially when I gave the same exact response.
"So?"
When asked why I could be so nonchalant about it, my reason was really quite simple. If a person can figure out these sorts of things about themselves and not only find acceptance, but also happiness in reaching that level of self-identification and awareness, then who the hell am I to tell them they somehow got it wrong or not accept them on that same level?
In many ways, I am profoundly envious of those people because it's something I've never really been able to do for myself.
I'd like to tell you that I know who I am and what I'm about, but the truth is for the majority of my life, I've only accepted the negative aspects of myself and a lot of that came from being conditioned to do so. Growing up, it wasn't a case of getting reinforcement for what I did right as much as for what I did that people found wrong.
I won't go so far as to boast that I was a genius or prodigy at an early age, but I knew my stuff and I was proud of that knowledge. But when I'd express that knowledge either in class or even at home sometimes, it was perceived me showing off or being a "smart-alec," thereby making other people look bad.
So I'd shut up and became conflicted for a long time about how I could express the fact that I wasn't an idiot and wasn't trying to talk down to others simply because I knew more than they did about a particular subject. It falls under the Pavlovian principle of repetition building truth. If you hear something enough times, from enough people, you learn to internalize it so that becomes something you live by.
It wasn't a matter of my intelligence either. Over the years, I accepted virtually every fault that I seemed to possess when it came to my looks, my social skills, ability to do jobs, write a book, go to college, all of it. Not only could I not see any hint of positives in myself, but I shunned the people who tried to convince me that I had them as well.
I couldn't accept that there was anything else in here but some diseased, half-mad freak who knew things no one wanted to hear and had nothing to offer anyone else. That had been my life for nearly 30 years.
Even now, with the realization that there is more to me than just all the negatives lodged firmly in my mind, it's still very hard for me to not look at myself in a similar way. Mistakes are still magnified and the moments where I think I should do something the "right" way and don't still bring a high level of self-scrutiny.
I guess the important part, though, is I'm learning how to undo that programming and become able to accept the fact that despite everything, I'm not as terrible a person as I've been convinced of for so long.
Eventually, I'd like to think it's okay to finally come to the realization that there's more to us than just the ugly things we become convinced exist inside us.
No comments:
Post a Comment