I was looking through my journal from last year. I’ve told you before that last year wasn’t a happy time for me, but seeing my words–reading my anguish and despair–made me feel something that I didn’t expect to feel, gratitude. I was filled with gratitude, not necessarily for the events and reasons for my anguish, but for the growth that has taken place to bring me from those moments to where I am now.
There are many people who upon finding out who my dad is (I told y’all I still say is cause speaking of him in the past tense doesn’t feel right), throw many assumption upon me. If I’m honest, I have relatives who throw those same assumptions–which I find strange as they know of the hurdles my immediate family went through to get to where my dad eventually led us. The assumptions always contain the same theory–my life has been great, easy even. Even today, my life must be great with no real struggles or difficulties. The truth is that my life has been full of difficulties. I will admit that there have been some great moments and times, but those moments don’t by any means negate the strife. When I’ve shared my story with others, they are often left shocked and they usually say the same thing, “I would have never guessed.” That only fuels my belief that there is no way to know a person’s life by looking at the surface. It’s one of the very reasons I’m so fascinated by the other mere mortals and their stories. We all have a story and I believe with everything that I have that we are meant to share those stories to help one another.
In saying that though, I recognize that there is a tendency to tell one’s story so much that one begins to identify with their story. One begins to see themselves as nothing more than the details and events of his or her story. I fell into that trap for a long while. I think a lot of my journey through this last year was about me releasing my identity with my story. I became so wrapped up in the tragic things that happened to me that I felt that that was all there was to me. I repeatedly told the tragic events of my life to the point that they became my identity. My answer to the question, Who are you? was This happened to me and that and this and this then that and some more. I couldn’t see those things as simple external conditions that had no bearing on who I was.
I don’t know when things began to shift for me, but I know they did. I realized recently that I was no longer identifying with my story when I posted a Throwback Thursday photo of my beloved deceased Maltese, Snowball. A friend asked me if he’d died and I told her yes. I then relayed the details of things–how he passed 2 years after my dad and my divorce and a year after the passing of my grandfather. My cousin jokingly referenced the movie Life with me. He referenced the scene where Eddie Murphy’s character Ray reads the letter from his fellow inmate, Pokerface. His mother’s neighbor writes him detailing all of the tragic things that have happened since he became locked up. The letter is full of tragedy. His cousins, sister, parents and even his dog died. It was funny in the movie, but in real life, not so much? Yet I laughed when my cousin went there–and not to mask my pain–but because I genuinely found it funny. That’s when it hit me. I no longer identify with those things. Those things no longer define me. I have moved past needing to anchor myself with those events. To think, for a long time, I would tell people I was a bad country song. I even found some honor in that. I’m truly grateful to be beyond those days and that line of thinking.
I have been speaking at Sarcoidosis events for the past 7 years and last year was the first year that I didn’t enjoy myself. The event itself was lovely. However, I didn’t enjoy myself because I’m required to share my father’s Sarcoidosis “story.” I don’t enjoy telling it any longer because I feel like it doesn’t do my father any justice. It’s not his story. Yes, he had some experiences with the disease. However, I no longer wish to reheat the same soup year after year. His life was so much more than his illness, the hospitalizations, allergic reactions to medication and his ultimate death. The short of it is that he’s not that story. So I have to stop telling it. I have to stop telling it for him and for myself. It no longer serves.
If you’re not already in a space where you recognize that you are not your story, the sum of your parts of your life, I hope you are on your way. My wish for you is that you can see that whatever has happened is already behind you and does not necessarily dictate where you can go. And it’s ok if you’re not. I wasn’t for a long time. But I’m so thankful I am now.
What I didn’t realize until this weekend is that the reason that my father and I were such over-givers and the reason we don’t allow our cup to runneth over is because deep down we didn’t believe we could have symbiotic relationships. We didn’t believe we could have people look out for us, do for us, be there for us. And why did we believe this, you ask? Well, let me answer. It’s the thing that’s behind the answer to the question I was asked this weekend, which was What do you have to prove and who do you have to prove it to? My answer was simple and I didn’t even have to think about it. My answer was that I have to prove that I’m worthy to everyone. But the truth is, I don’t really need to prove it to everyone. Everyone is my scape goat so that I don’t have to face that my real aggressor is the woman in the mirror. So the truth is that I have to prove I’m worthy to myself. Worthy of what, you ask? Well, let me also answer that as well. Worthy of good things. Ahh . . . Now you see how all the dots connect! My issue of worthiness blocks me from accepting and receiving good things. No matter how much I want them, I will never have them or enjoy them until I understand one simple truth. I am worthy. I am worthy because I am. I don’t have to do anything, say anything, or be anything to be worthy. I also don’t have to prove it to myself. I just need to accept it.
My sensitivity displayed itself in ways that seemed to get under my father’s skin. One of my worst offenses was that I cried. A lot. Actually I still do. I cried if I was happy. I cried if I was sad. Or mad. I even cried if I saw another in pain. But that was unacceptable for my father. Crying was for punks and I needed to stop crying all of the time. I remember one such episode when I was 9 years old. A boy on my school bus punched me in the eye. While my dad did defend me once he found out, he was also quite upset with me for not fighting the way he thought I should have. He became incredibly upset when he asked me, What did you do after he punched you? only to hear me say in response, I cried. I thought it was a ridiculous question. It hurt. Crying when hurt is a normal response, correct? What was I supposed to do? My father thought it a ridiculous response. Who in the hell cries when they get hurt? Hell naw that ain’t normal! I was supposed to kick the boy’s ass! That’s what I was supposed to do. So he told me that I needed to kick his ass the next day, otherwise he would kick mine. Now to some, this probably seems like a reasonable order from a parent. It certainly was based on my dad’s own upbringing. He was old school. Old school wasn’t about being a punk. Punks jumped up to get beat down, so you best not be a punk. That meant you didn’t let anybody hurt you. If you got hurt, it was your fault. I didn’t know at the time, but for my father that applied to my emotional self as well as my physical self. As far as he was concerned, he was doing it for my own good. He would even lament about how hard it was to raise a daughter because he couldn’t be as hard on me as he wanted to be–certainly not as hard as he could be with a boy. He hated how soft he had to be with me. I, on the other hand, was perplexed as to how he could possibly think he was soft at all.
Putting the CL on that ASS! 
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