You are broken. I am broken. Even if you don't consider yourself broken, we're all broken to some degree. My mother and grandmother taught me how to maintain a "stiff upper lip," the image of a dog trained to smile like a human with its top lip quivering. The women in my family 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 while returning home subservient and meek where the female 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 I admired how courageous my grandmother was while noting how withdrawn Grandpa was. I noticed this curious domestic pattern repeated in friends' homes. The mother wore the pants at home, while the father was the omnipotent male in charge 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 preferential treatment. They had the best sports equipment, the best coaches, 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 and to keep a smile on our faces. 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 feigned smile was not expected of boys who could look as mean and tough as they wanted and nobody called them difficult or worse, a tomboy.
It was not safe to show how you really felt except to your closest girlfriends, or 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 was one tough cookie who 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 to set a good example. I was not able to show fear, weakness, or insecurity because for a firstborn 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. Reality would splinter me, making it difficult to piece me back together. But we hold the pieces together, pretending the jagged rocks of words and betrayals do not hurt us.
There are those among us who have been broken so many times that they do not feel much at all. Their breaks were catastrophic, more like Grand Canyons than potholes in the road of life. They stopped smiling altogether and prefer to live on the fringes of society. They may refer to themselves as introverts, but it is 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, some terrible and unforgettable accident, something nightmares are made of. I would call these people "the forgotten" because they may have been written off by society or their families as nonredeemable. In turn, they have no desire to be part of a society or family who only want them to keep smiling. They are a subset of society who refuse to play the game of respectability; they have outgrown the rules. Their pain was so consequential that being a part of society is not an option anymore. They let the mask slip 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 decision 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. It took years of inner searching to find the me that time had buried, but eventually I unearthed her, an excavation of the girl I had 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, innocent part that should never have changed. She should have stayed true to herself exactly as she was. 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 meant to be, which was a strawberry blond, green-eyed, laughing daredevil. A musical leprechaun full of melodies and magic before I was told that I had to be a certain way.
The question for us is: how do we get back what was lost, what was ours at birth but got traded away? Of all important questions, this seems to me, late in life, the most urgent. How do I get back what was given like gold exchanged for tin foil? That organic, shiny, innocent kid is still in my heart. In reality we do not give it away but cover it up. As years of pretending pile on, our real selves retreated. But while we cover up and ignore it, our singular, magnificent 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." You may have traveled a long way from where you started, but try and catch a glimpse of yourself as you were when your journey began.
Know that you will never be that child again; it is not possible. Too many events have passed. Besides, you are no longer a child. There is only a memory of who you once were. And in ten years you will be a different person still. There is no way to stay the same or to turn back the clock. What matters now is fully accepting the person you have become without rejecting it. But this time it is vital that you do not try to put on 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 self, it is because they are wearing a mask to hide their pain. If you are broken, as we all are—face it. Really look carefully at yourself. The more you face your 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 society is a broken system that produces broken people. Nevertheless, take responsibility for giving away the parts of you that you did.
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 feel. 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 as a detour: "Don't look at me, look at your own faults." 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 look at ourselves with honest eyes, we 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. Conversely, I am not asking you to feel less than, nor better than anyone. 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. You do not deserve to live in the shadow of shame, but neither should you pretend that pain has not touched 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. We are all broken, and there is tremendous freedom in understanding that.
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