Recently my best friend, whom I’ve known for seven years, told me that something she likes to think about is what she’d plan on a perfect day for every person closest to her. What she does is correlate all the information she has about the person and imagine what she would include in a day designed to delight them. I think it's something that helps her better understand what she knows about a person and gives her a clearer picture of what they value and find joy in.
Then she hit me with a realisation I wasn't prepared for.
“It’s usually easy to do when you get to know a person,” she told me, “only I’ve thought about it a lot lately and I don’t think I could plan a perfect day for you.”
I suppose this should have surprised me when I first heard it. After all, we talk all the time. We've known each other for years and I feel pretty honoured that I was one of the first people that she told was autistic. I'd say we're pretty close. In fact, I think I know her pretty well. I might even be able to plan a perfect day for her too. But she went on,
"I don't even know little things about you, like your favourite music or what you do in your spare time..."
I thought about it for a minute and then I realised, I wasn't surprised she said this. At. All. You see, I'm a very guarded person, only you'd never know that though and that's by design. Every word that comes out of this mouth, every word that falls on this page is carefully considered with the aim of feeling as safe as possible. It always has been too. At least that was the aim anyway. I've always wanted to feel like I was just like everyone else, and there was nothing more different about me (I was already the only Black person, surely that was different enough...), so taking my cue about who I should be and my place in the world from everyone around me, seemed like the safest way to be.
My whole being has been delicately and painstakingly crafted from the social rules and expectations of the people around me. I've spent a lot of time living in different places all over the world. I moved right after my first stint in university and have been on the road ever since. As if I've been searching for the right place for me. I'm not sure I've actually found that place and I wonder if so much of my moving was about searching for the people where I could most easily form myself most alike. Maybe I believed the easier I could become what others expected, the closer I felt to what it meant to be myself.
I rarely made a decision for myself that wasn't informed by the consensus of the people around me. The consensus ebbed and flowed depending on where I ran away to next, but one thing was certain, it was rarely about me and what I wanted. But it always felt like it was. Or at least I had to find a way to make it that way. There were so many of them to name but they were always there…
I need to be skinny. I need to have long hair. I need to be funny. I need to be smart. I need to brush off any comments about my skin or the shape of my body because it's not a big deal. I need to be cool about everything.
I need to be good at school. Don't be a writer. I need to work with children. I need to be a teacher. I need to own property to really be successful.
This is the kind of relationship you should have, the way your family should look, the way your kid should be raised.
These are the clothes you should wear, the foods you should like, the places you should holiday in, the music you should listen to.
Don't speak up. Don't create conflict.
Do things right the first time - or don’t do them at all.
I have a whole list of rules that have informed my life. That kept me as close to what I thought was expected as I could be without swallowing me whole in despair of what was lost because I learned to disconnect so completely from myself. It didn't matter where I moved to or who I met, the rules and expectations followed. As the world around me shifted and changed, so did I. I blended into expectations for what I hoped meant my safety and my belonging. And with that, a whole new list of favourites, life goals and interests would emerge.
It's hard to know what your perfect day might look like when every day changes depending on who you're around and what you think they want to see in you.
This is the polar opposite of my best friend who in her first year of high school was writing essays on the nonsense of the gender binary without even having words to describe the harm that's inflicted on all of us. She just innately knew that shit was messed up and she wasn't going to be weighed down with labels placed on her of any sort. And no one else should have to be either.
She was going to define herself. Her needs and wants. Her life.
I could probably design her perfect day though because she's a lot different from me. She leans hard into the vulnerability of getting to know herself and sharing that knowledge with those around her. I think it helps her see what's possible beyond the labels and expectations she's had to reject throughout her life. With that, I wonder if there's a sense of safety that comes from the felt sense of knowing what's true for you. A sense of self that shifts when it feels time to, not when the world outside you demands it. There's so much vulnerability in being with the discomfort of knowing that what's right for you isn't always "the right" you've been told you should be.
I'm still learning about what it means to be vulnerable and what it means to see myself beyond the labels placed on me. I'm still learning to look beyond the expectations I took to mean as my truths and question what is true for me now. I'm still learning to decipher the messages deep within my being and rediscover the person that's there. I'm still learning about what it means to be with the discomfort that swells up in my body and get curious (without judgment) as I wonder,
"What if it doesn't mean I'm wrong or bad, but that I have unmet needs too?"
"What if it's possible to hold the love I hold for someone and still disagree with what they're saying?"
"What if I can still care about someone and not have the capacity to be able to go see them when they ask?"
"What if someone can dislike me or what I said, and it not be about me at all?"
"What if the shame that I feel no longer carries a message that I wish to hold? What if it's trying to tell me something else, instead?"
I step towards vulnerability when I open myself up to more possibilities. When I can do that, I know I'm stepping closer to reconnecting with myself and others too.
What have you been relearning about yourself lately?
❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️ Ps fuckiNG gorgeous storytelling Tho contents - fuck everyone except for your brilliant bff ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥 how never ending ly irritating slash life ruining that when others shatter our truths we have the fucking pain in arse of putting ourselves back together again & like u said oh dear god when u don’t even have basic safety guarunteed on account of the unbearable whiteness of your upbringing & special strain of anti blackness u faced every FUCKING day - I don’t know how to end this sentence so I’ll end it here. Thank u for wriitng this im so exicted to keep reading it. I can’t imagine re all that fun to dive back into these things either ???? Not from my experienfe of tryna write anyway lol ;AS YOU OF ALL PPL KNOW so just need to say thank u for the generosity in what u shared. And then those questions ofof ooof oof can’t wait for sesh tomorrow. The first one made me 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 & last one I’m itching with deep curiosity what else could the shame I feel be telling me outside of those stories I’ve been familiar with??? Genuinely curious (and wondering its link tor me to resentment and bitterness’????!!!! That’s what I’m mainly thinking weirdly enough) xxxxx