Keeping Up Appearances

Isn't it amazing when you spend your entire life believing certain "truths" about yourself, your siblings and your family and you suddenly realize that much of what you believed was a facade?

I've spent far too many years comparing myself to family members, being compared by my parents to family members and friends and always coming up lacking. I've always lived with stigmas that my mother has put on me since birth, being born without a penis set me up for a long lifetime of not being what she truly wanted in a child of hers. As I said to an aquaintance a while back "you look at me sometimes and think what the fuck is that and how did it end up in my life?" and I know that look well-it's the one I got from my parents regularly.

I have had my eyes opened to several truths about people in the last few weeks. It's such a paradigm shift when you begin to believe that you are probably the healthiest emotionally in the family that prides itself on being able to tolerate you and your quirks since they are obviously perfect.

So what if you're divorced. So what if you chose to keep the baby born out of wedlock. So what if you got fired, declared bankruptcy, got your lip pierced, bought a car you couldn't afford, got a DUI, married the wrong person (more than once). Life happens. Life is messy and painful and beautiful and there is a certain order to the chaos if you can just step back and let things happen. Just be HONEST about who you are, the choices you made, the actions you regret and the decisions you're proud of. It's when I finally opened myself up, wounds and all, bright side and dark side and said "THIS is me" that I could realize that I'm actually pretty fucking amazing. I'm crazy, but at least I'm honest about my crazy-I'm not hiding anything or cowering behind other people to avoid the ugly fallout of my actions. I faced my shit head on.

It sucked. Sometimes it sucked such serious ass that I didn't think I'd live through it. But I did. And I can look anyone in the face and say "yes. this is me. I'm crazy and sane, scared and brave, beautiful and ugly, but I'm who I am" and I'm able to walk away from people I couldn't walk away from before. And I'm able to embrace people I was too afraid to touch before.

And there ain't nobody in my family better than me. And there definately ain't nobody in my family stronger than me.

And that tremor you feel, that's the earth tilting on it's axis because I ain't your bitch anymore.


Thursday May 31, 2007 - 07:15pm (EDT)