You are broken. I am broken. Even if you don't consider yourself broken, we're all broken to some extent. My mother and grandmother taught me how to maintain a "stiff upper lip" like the image of a dog trained to smile like a human, with its top lip quivering. My family's women only wanted to turn me into a good soldier, not to educate me in invulnerability. Furthermore, films like G.I. Jane taught me to be discreetly stronger than men who brag to their friends but then return home to be subservient and meek because their girlfriend, wife, or mother is in charge.
My maternal grandmother helped to raise me, and because I got to see her relationship with my grandfather up close, I realized that Grandpa was pampered and spoiled by my grandmother. He earned the money while Grandma was the planner, the organizer, the strategist, and the problem-solver, as well as the hired help. She was the brains of the outfit who shouldered the harsh realities of life. My Grandfather read the newspaper as Grandma fretted and stewed over the problems. Gramps would only come to life as the protector when asked to, when he absolutely had to. I admired how courageous my grandmother was while noting how withdrawn Grandpa was. This curious domestic pattern was repeated in my friend's homes. The mother wore the pants in her domain, while the father was the omnipotent male in charge when at work. I saw it as a balancing act of male and female energy.
At school, girls were allowed to shine, but only so brightly. Boys were given the preferential treatment as they had the best sports equipment, the best coaches, and the best fields and practice times, yet their classroom participation was often lackluster compared to the girls. We were expected not to complain about our second-class treatment in life and to keep a smile on our face. If you did not smile, you were told that you were not as attractive as the other girls. The school photographer held up his hand and crooned, "Smile!" This command to smile was not expected of boys who could look as mean and tough as they wanted, and nobody called them difficult.
It was not safe to show how you really felt except to your closest girlfriends or to your mother. My mother had been told by my grandmother, who was a bank manager, to "put your Bank of America smile on, and never let them see you sweat." My grandmother, one tough cookie, had learned never to let the mask slip if you wanted to play in the big leagues with the men. When I shared my real feelings with my mother or grandmother, I was reminded of my responsibility as the big sister and to set a good example. I was not able to show fear, weakness, or insecurity. Those were undesirable traits. Because there was little room for real feelings, I turned into glass. I had to harden. But as I seized up emotionally, I became as fragile as glass, though I was not see-through. Nobody could see through me unless I wanted them to. I was more like frosted glass. And when dropped, I shattered. Reality would splinter, making it difficult to piece anything together again. This is how we get shattered—we have held ourselves together too long, pretending jagged rocks of words and betrayals did not hurt us, wearing phony smiles slapped on top of broken glass.
There are those among us who have broken so many times that they do not feel very much at all. Their breaks were catastrophic, more like Grand Canyons than potholes in the road of life. These stopped smiling altogether and prefer to live on the fringes of society. They may refer to themselves as introverts, but it is much more serious than that. They are not merely inward-turned; they are a personality devoid of something. A car cannot run off a cliff without being mangled. Something catastrophic happened to these people, something terrible and unforgettable, something nightmares are made of. I would call these people "the forgotten" because they may have been written off by society and their families as unredeemable. In turn, they have no need, no desire to be part of a society or family who only want them to keep smiling. These are a subset of society who refuse to play the game of respectability anymore; they have grown beyond the rules. They mark out their own standards and rules. Their pain was so consequential that being a part of society was not an option anymore. The mask had slipped once and for all.
I am a forgotten person living on the edge, doing my own thing and making my own rules, living an unapologetic existence. But do not feel sorry for me, for it was a conscious choice to leave what I found to be a contrived and plastic life, which held no meaning for me anymore. I wanted to find myself, to find my real self, and I did. It took many years of inner searching to find the me that time had buried, but eventually I unearthed her. It was an excavation of the girl I had once been. The tragedy of this story, and it is everyone's story, is that my inner child was the best part of me. She was the beautiful and innocent part that should never have changed. She should have stayed, for the layers of adulthood meant nothing. But she was chased away in my effort to be brave, to be strong and resilient. Not that those qualities were bad, but in the process of becoming something, I sacrificed my core self, what I was destined to be, which was a strawberry blond, green-eyed, laughing daredevil. A musical leprechaun I was, full of melodies and magic. Then I was told that I had to be a way I wasn't, so I changed, and so did you.
The question for us is, how do we get back what was lost, what was ours at birth but taken from us? Of all important questions, this seems to me, late in life, to be the most urgent. How do we get back what was traded away, like gold exchanged for tin foil? Who you and I were, that organic, shiny, innocent kid is still at the heart of us all. Isn't that good to know? In reality we did not give it away but covered it up. As years of pretending were piled on, our real selves, our souls, disappeared. But while we cover it up and ignore it, a soul is assigned to us for an eternity. It has not gone anywhere; you have. You moved away from it. When told you were not good enough, you dressed it up and someone patted you on the head and said, "Good lad," or "Thata girl." The only solution is to remember yourself as you once were. You may have traveled a long way from where you started, and this is perfectly fine. But try and catch a glimpse of yourself as you began this journey.
Know that you will never be that child again; it is not possible. Too many events have passed to go back now, and you are no longer that child. That is only a memory of who you once were. Life is about change; you are always changing. In ten years, you will be a different person than you are today. See that there is no way to stay the same or to turn back time. What matters now is fully accepting the person you have become without trying to change it and without rejecting it. It is vital that you do not try and put a happy face or keep a stiff upper lip. These sorts of masks only keep us apart from our real selves. You are exactly as you should be at this age and stage. There is no better place to be. There is no need to hide who you are. If others cannot understand your real feelings, it is because they are wearing a mask to hide their pain. Do not conceal your pain or the real you for anyone because that only serves to reinforce your cracks. If you are broken, as we all are, face it. Accept it. Really look carefully at yourself. The more you face your real feelings, the less you will feel the need to hide. Being cracked, even becoming "forgotten," is not a weakness; it is the result of tremendous stress and trauma. You are worthy of compassion, not judgment. And see society for what it is: a broken system that produces broken people. Nevertheless, take responsibility for giving away the parts of you that you gave away.
Shame is the feeling or experience that something is wrong with you, that you are broken. Shame, and other people's condemnation, can make us hide ourselves, stop relating, and feel less-than. Shame is toxic because it is usually dumped upon us by other broken people working overtime to cover up how defective they are. Arrogant people are in fact struggling with an inferiority complex, or at least feelings of not measuring up. Instead of admitting feelings of brokenness, judgmental people point the accusing finger away from themselves as a detour: "Don't look at me, look over there." Shame is a trap that guilt sets, whether that guilt is warranted or not. I am not asking you to swim in a cesspool of shame. Rather, I am suggesting that when we are willing to look at ourselves with honest eyes, we can see how far we have drifted. This realization should fill us with compassion for the younger part of ourselves who felt not acceptable or not safe to be ourselves. I am not asking you to feel less than or better than anyone else. I am only stating a truth: that we are all broken. And knowing this can give you the strength to stand apart from other people's arrogance, judgmentalism, and attempts to manipulate you into whatever they want you to be. You do not deserve to live in the shadow of shame, but neither should you pretend that life has not broken you, for it has. I know that with certainty, without having to meet you. For life is a merciless steamroller whose job it is to kick the shit out of us. And if it has not done its job on you, I daresay you still have an ego that is yet to be smashed. You are broken. I am broken. We are all broken, and there is a tremendous freedom in understanding that.