When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time doing tomboy-ish activities. I played with Matchbox Racers, rode on the neighbor's skateboard (literally sat on it and pushed myself up the street), collected bugs, built forts. Perhaps my favorite tomboy-ish activity from my childhood was playing in the mud. My sister and I would squat in the little patch of dirt underneath the kitchen window or in the vacant lots up the street, add some water, and dig in. Like little elephants, we found healing in the clay that coated our skin as we packed it into small cakes. Little cow patties of dirt.
In this grand time where we spent most of our time outdoors (what a concept in today's glued-to-the-screen era), we were one with nature. Insects, spiders, hummingbirds, lizards. Before my neighborhood was fully built-up, although we never saw snakes themselves, we would find pieces of shed snakeskin. Paper-thin. Indented with phantom scales. Evidence of change. Evidence of growth.
Lately, as I've changed and become more comfortable with my authentic self, there are parts of me that have outgrown my former skin. The old skin has become stretched tight. Restrictive even.
As I begin to accept who I really am and let go of who I thought I should be, I realize that some paradigms I've established for myself are no longer working.
I used to thrive off of people-pleasing. This, I believe, is a curse for many, if not most, women. We spend our time sacrificing ourselves for the sake of others' happiness, not necessarily because we believe it will make us happier to do so, but because we either believe it is what we are supposed to do or we believe that it will somehow make us appear more feminine and worthy.
Don't get me wrong. I still believe in honoring the people in my life. They are amazing, lovely, supportive people. But I no longer believe that honoring them means sacrificing myself. And those people who do not fit the adjectives above, no longer fit in the space of this newly-expanded skin of mine.
I've also lived a life where I have hidden my disability. In this former life, before I shed the skin of shame, I would do whatever I could to mask the outward symptoms of MD in hopes that I could keep the ruse up, make people love me for my winning personality, and then tell them my shameful truth. Inwardly, though, the whole time I just waited for the other shoe to drop. For that moment when I would have to make my grand confession before the jury and wait for the verdict of whether or not the other person would stick around.
I've especially done this in my dating life.
Not being myself is exhausting.
I'm happy to report that I have officially shed this oh-so-painful skin. It's been a gradual process. This weekend, though, I experienced some real evidence of this growth. I went out with a friend and met a nice gentleman who happened to have a puppy outside waiting for him. Well, those are two things I cannot resist. Let's face it, the puppy would have been enough. When we went out to see it, I was faced with a quandary. The baby Viszla was at the bottom of a flight of stairs.
The old me would have stood at the top of the stairs and oohed and aawwed from up there. But I knew in that split-second of a moment that I had a skin to shed. I had a new me to show. So I did it. I climbed down the stairs. Right in front of him. And the even bigger moment of skin-shedding came when it was time to climb back up them. Me climbing stairs is about as graceful as a horse on a highwire. The old me, making some excuse about having a bad leg, would have let the cute guy go ahead of me so he wouldn't have to watch me do the dirty deed.
I'm so proud to say that I didn't give in to my old habits this weekend. I took a deep breath and climbed the damned stairs ahead of him. And I told him what I have. Said the words clearly without the inkling of a stutter. Muscular Dystrophy. And even though the inner child in me cringed a little and waited in that hair's breadth of a moment for rejection, I knew that I was doing right by honoring myself. And guess what? He didn't even flinch. He just asked if it hurt. And then continued flirting with me.
This newer version of me was partly inspired by a TED talk I saw this summer. I If you haven't yet seen this TED talk on vulnerability, please take a few minutes to watch it. It's had over six million hits. Six million. That number speaks volumes to our need to understand what makes us tick. Our need to be ourselves and be loved for exactly that. Not the ourselves that we force ourselves to be. Not the ones with the too-tight skin but the ones with the old skin sliding off.
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