Most times, the world slows me down while judging me for not going faster.
When it is not with a physical restrain on my agency, it will be done by those feelings people wrapped around me so they can predict and enforce who I really am. As if the thought of skipping the discovery step (which by default can last as long as a fucking lifetime) was a win in their eyes. It happens every single time, with every one, with very few exceptions (although reasons, durations and reactions do tend to vary a lot).
Throughout my life, being social has always meant bracing myself for the impact their initial judgement of me will cause once they find out how wrong they got me.
In its mildest form, it is usually down to race, sexuality, country of origin, intelligence and education. In its most aggressive form, it will encompass every single thing I do or say.
It will remain unspoken, obviously, and it won’t be all at once. In part because I have learned to stay incredibly composed while enduring those sporadic faces of surprise with every misconception of me they have to contend with, and more importantly, to what it betrays of them as a person and who they say they are.
It’s taken me decades to finally and fully realise that what at my end has always been the joy and wonder of finding new voices, new perspectives, new people; for most just translated into a snap judgment to joke about, followed by the eerie sense of suspicion that keeps on growing with each interaction that doesn’t conform to the image they have of me.
Our experiences of getting to know each other rarely match, and I was often blamed for somehow not being someone you can read easily, stereotype and play with on demand.
The waiting game
It is always a matter of time, until I’m empty.
I don’t let it bring me down though. If anything, it has forced on me the freedom to stop trying to control their opinion of me. I can’t. I won’t.
And while it does hurt, every single time, I just see it as a consequence of existing. It is ironic when I am usually considered soft and weak without noticing how thick-skinned that truly makes me.
It is them, and them only, that have to go through the painful realisation that strength can and does come from endurance, not just muscle. Those comments behind my back, those negative thoughts that they so arrogantly held as the truth, were just an excuse to not have to pay attention, and a show of stupidity that end up embarrassing them all the way to the exit. They stay ignorant while I am forced to constantly clue up.
Each time left to do the maths on how much they have carved out off of me with their assumptions, meant another stop along the journey to pick up the chalk and start writing on the blackboard. Because that’s exactly what I do. Level up.
I know fully well that during and by the time the stop or I stop them, I am still pending a full sanity check on which chunks I am missing or have been replaced with doubts and negativity.
I have to start again, because risking pain is the only way to find true happiness. It is the sunk cost fallacy of me investing my patience in the hope that they will be the ones that see me for who I am. No ifs, not buts. While having to shut up that fear of the possibility that they invest theirs in simply trying to prove me wrong.
There is no other way than to risk it all
The reality they don’t see is that they are taking my time without giving me theirs. That time they had to get to know me, wasted on testing, daring, or worse yet, use me while pretending to like me.
How do you tell people that the only thing you expect from them is exactly the one thing they won’t do?
How do you tell them that ultimately, I am happy with either?
That even at their worst, they are just gifting me another lesson while they just remain bitter.
That if they give me some time, they might be able to see what a lifetime of cruel expectations can turn a person into. But instead, they cynically take their gamble on you while betting firmly on disappointment.
And there’s never a good outcome.
Damned if I am, damned if I am not.
If I end up being who I say I am, they will blame me for somehow making a fool out of them. If I failed at one of their tests, they will get their validation and use it to reject me outright.
Because their love only gives you two choices
Either be the version they have of you, or stop caring about them altogether.
About what the say, what the think, what they do, but most importantly, what they meant to you. To have to give up, no explanation, on the person you have in front of you and let them see what you mean from the distance and in absolute silence.
And what for most is a perfectly viable option, even a win, for me it is the highest form of defeat.
If you ever want to hurt me, make stop caring about you the only way to stop you from hurting me, and to finally show you who I am.
Every time I linger on this connections, I stop watering my own garden, let the sparks fly over the dried up weeds, my mind too busy wondering why they did what they did. Too preoccupied on their opinions to evade the external pressures and just give in into their madness. To prove them right by leaving those flames grow waiting for an acknowledgement, a grace that was never an option. And all on my own.
Seeing them walk away, standing in the middle of the trap they set off for you, fully validated, while around you there’s a raging fire, leaving nothing but a begin, again.
Head in the clouds
I’ve been through it too many times to count. But I won’t stop. Until I finally find enough of those that deserved that open heart and kindness from the very beginning. At the end of the day, kindness as the default becomes the only way to give an opportunity to the right ones to know you, and the wrong ones to finally learn the lesson.
Never dare to judge a book by its cover.
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