East of North

If you’ve browsed my website, you may have noticed the ‘About Me’ page, which describes me physically as “a polo-shirt jean-skirt scarf-covered gadget-happy hippie in hiking boots.” That’s still mostly true. Though I am useless with make-up, rarely think about how I look, and regularly avoid portraits, I’m willing to share this recent photograph Tom took of me here:

Personality-wise, I think you will find most people disagree about who I am, as my interests are so varied. I am artistic and I can create aesthetically pleasing work in a variety of mediums, but advertising and selling my work makes me extremely uncomfortable. I love nature, especially farms, but I have very strong allergies to animals, grasses, molds, and dust. And I can’t ever remember to water my plants.

I do indeed have extremely vivid and perfectly memorable dreams, which often exhaust me, scare me, and otherwise stir up a lot of unwanted emotions. I do not watch traumatic, intense, or scary movies, because I am too sensitive to feeling and living the violent imagery which will most certainly become more fodder for my dreams.

My first birthday party was a clear day, filled with tall, familiar people and one scary dog. I remember toddling around the driveway, my aunt and Gram sitting in folding metal chairs with scratchy nylon weave. I remember bouncing balls and swinging swings. I remember too many things about my past. They often interject themselves into my mind and preoccupy my thoughts, unless I concentrate on a challenging activity — like playing video games, painting, processing a photo, writing, or reading. These interjected memories bring with them a lot of pain and regularly spoil an otherwise happy or benign activity, like going to dinner with friends or washing the dishes. Such is the nature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

See the vacant, detached expression under the baseball cap on the ambiguously gendered child sitting alone to the right? That’s me.

I was voted Most Dedicated in high school, along with a guy named Larry. Socially, we were both completely unable to form lasting relationships with other people in school. Larry had a low IQ and struggled to learn. I had a high IQ and learned extremely well. We both challenged ourselves in ways that scared others. We were not broken by the constant rejection, by being different or strange. Where failure or fear would stop most people from trying, Larry and I radically did what we both wanted to do, no matter how absurd it seemed to others.

If you have strong feelings about who I am, you can always share them (even anonymously) on my Johari window, which compares how I describe myself to how others describe me. I find the exercise interesting because although people agree with me that I am intelligent, confident, adaptable and independent, others are more likely to describe me primarily as intelligent and loving, and also observant, reflective, trustworthy, or witty.

Some of the things which were not selected as my strengths: accepting, dependable, dignified, modest, organised, powerful, proud, sympathetic. Moreover, no one seems to agree with me that I am able and clever. I do see their point now, but I have to admit, wouldn’t it be fantastic to be every positive attribute under the sun? Then we would Perfect. Untouchable. Unapproachable, even. I would never disappoint you. You would always understand. I would never fail.

And yet, I’m certain that being Perfect would make me feel even more that life wasn’t worth living.

So if we can only be some things, I would rather be who I am — intelligent, loving, and trustworthy — than accepting, dependable and sympathetic. Having empathy and love rather than sympathy means I truly care enough to challenge, change, and improve our lives. Being trustworthy rather than dependable means I am non-threatening, supportive and honest, no matter how many deadlines I miss.

Not everyone can be detail-oriented, and it’s often those with the most empathy who struggle to focus on the logistics. I regularly get carried away in how much I care about others, and I certainly work too hard at hiding how much I care. It is easy for anyone to miss the small details when you are overwhelmed with feeling.

After being bullied and attacked most of my life, I am well practiced at withdrawing myself, my emotions and my interests from others. As a result, I am often accused of being uncaring and unsympathetic by aggressive people who, ironically, are the last people on earth to deserve to know how much I actually do understand and care.

Too much. That’s how much I care. Much more than most deserve.

So much, it takes weeks, even months, to stop grieving. If I let myself watch the news and read the papers, I’d grieve over strangers, too. I’d spend my entire life grieving unless I was able to detach myself and withdraw. As it is, it still consumes me. But I’d rather it consumed me in private than let others know how much they are able to hurt me.

Though my mom named me with this very hope, I will never be president. I won’t be a doctor, a lawyer, or any form of professional. I do not know how to be a daughter, a sister, or a friend. There is a very good chance I am incapable of being a mother. I never even dreamed I would be a wife, but somehow the sweetest, kindest, most uncritical and most loving man and his family were able to recognize and love me. A miracle, really, because I was and continue to be so broken.

I chose this quote from Van Gogh, because I empathise with his struggle to relate to and communicate with others.

“What am I in the eyes of most people, a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person–somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then–even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody has in his heart.”
– Vincent Van Gogh

Though Vincent himself had very different reasons than me for his struggles and also, hopefully, a very different end to them, I think he was ultimately able to communicate the beauty amongst his ashes. I myself will keep trying.

I appreciate every single person in my life who lets me just be me. There are so few.