born with a vengeance

I have absolutely no idea who I am. Some days, I hear stories about me, aged 6, picking flowers to bring to mom while she does her makeup in the ensuite. Other days, I remember red-faced tantrums, screaming at the top of my lungs, ready to burst wide open into flames.

I remember being bullied so, so badly. And I remember wondering how badly I messed up to deserve it. I remember talking badly about that girl, and feeling really guilty for doing it.

Sometimes I am the girl who hosts parties, sometimes I am the girl who leaves them early. Sometimes I’m a good friend and other times I am poor, terrible, no-good friend. Sometimes I beg for people to love me, because I have so much good inside of me. Sometimes I wonder why anyone at all could love a monster like me.

Sometimes I sit in my apartment and I can almost see myself, aged 11, walking in through the door and crawling into bed beside me. She hates her hair being touched, but loves her back tickled, and I listen to her tell me about how bad the bullying has gotten.

I don’t tell her there’s any reason she deserved it. I don’t even insinuate that there is one. I don’t think there is one.

I have no idea who I am. Some days I know everything, other days I know everything (in an annoying type of way). Sometimes I pass harsh judgement, on myself and onto strangers.

The hardest thing to learn when you're growing up (especially growing up in girlhood) is where to place blame. And if you're told time &  time again that 'people aren't inherently bad' and that others' actions always have a cause, you will spend the rest of your life burdening yourself with the blame in order to understand why anyone could treat someone else that way.

I look at little me and I sometimes wonder if the crime of girlhood has made her so confused about who I am. I wonder if I’d spent less time trying to be ladylike and totally under control of my emotions, that I would have been able to work through all these feelings instead of setting them on fire.

Little girls are taught that sensitivity is a sin. They are taught to sit nicely, so as not to make the perpetrator feel bad. They are taught to be classy, and handle things carefully, and grow a thick skin. I wore my emotions like a scarlet letter. It was absolutely humiliating that I couldn't get them under control. The more I tried, the worse it became. Little girls should never get too excited, too upset, too overwhelmed, to confused, too angry, or too anything. And dangerous things happen when a little girl can't get all that sorted out. They explode.

When a little girl is told that her emotional outbursts are overwhelming, annoying, embarrassing, dramatic, ridiculous, or whatever, she has no choice but to confront them internally. She won’t confront them in the safety of her own home with the people she loves. She will confront them on a girls night out with friends she didn’t even know back then. She will confront them in class when the teacher tells her to quiet down. She will confront them at the coffee shop when they get her order wrong. She will confront them when she’s at the butt of a joke.

She has no choice but to confront these feelings in the wrong places at exactly the wrong times.

And that’s when nobody knows her. That’s when she feels the most monster-like. A little girl will become a big girl, a lady, who doesn’t do these things right. She will likely lose friends in the process, because people naturally avoid ticking time-bombs.

That’s when I don’t know me. When something totally unimportant happens to me - or even near me - and the feelings come out of me like vomit. The dichotomy of embarrassment and rage. Humiliation and devastation. Loneliness and reclusiveness.

I ask myself: was I born with a vengeance? Was I made to hurt people, and bite? Was I made to scare people? Is my subconscious out for blood?

I develop a long list of terrible traits, going all the way back to the beginning with that stupid girl who bullied me and forced me to wonder why I deserved it. I go back to all the old reasons, pick myself apart like a vulture on roadkill, and give myself a life sentence for the charge of being evil at the core. An unfixable, inherently bad person.

There is room here for grace. I tell myself: I think anyone under these circumstances might warrant some type of reaction. I think I could be tired and need a nap. I think I could be actually offended by that joke-not-joke. I think some people are just harsh, and it has nothing to do with me. I think people who are truly monsters aren’t googling “how to be less annoying”.

Not everyone is going to know that you didn’t mean to grow horns and breathe fire back there. Not everyone owes you grace, and that’s the hardest part. Because you will lose people you love until you get it all under control.

I go back to little haleigh in my room with me.

I tell her: sometimes when (not if) you make mistakes, the outcome is damaged irreparably. And for the rest of your natural life, you will wear an emotional scar that shows itself when you feel vulnerable. You will be reminded, in your worst moments, how horrible you’ve been, and this will make you feel even more horrible. You will ask yourself if the human experience is to be a monster. And why is nobody else a monster but me? Unfortunately for them (but not for you) everyone has been and will be a monster again.

I think for someone who worries about how much space they take up, like myself, we spend a lot of time thinking that all the bad things that have happened to us have been the result of our own actions. That the complex opinions of everyone else around us are the holy truth, and we must be insane not to see it or be able to fit the mold. But people who don’t worry, or have enough serotonin in their brain not to even think about it, are smart enough to realize that people just have different opinions sometimes. That people just don’t like other people sometimes. That people grow apart for reasons completely and totally unrelated to the time you forgot to wish them a happy birthday!!!

I’ve met monsters too. Monsters scarier than me with many more teeth. I’ve met people who sleep soundly at night after they’ve hurt someone. I’ve met people who only give out one chance - not even two or the bare minimum three. I’ve met people who don’t even take a second to wonder if they are a monster.

And I don’t think I was born with a vengeance. I think I was a little girl in a pink sundress picking flowers for her mom in the morning. I think I love people with the whole heart I have and I feel things deeper than most people (deeper than I want to). I think my sensitivity makes me gentle, and kind. I think it makes me loyal, and passionate. I think people do things they don’t want to or mean to do for circumstances outside of their control, built up from childhoods they can never change.

I think you may always be somebody’s monster, and someone yours. That’s not your eternal judgment, and it’s not to say you can never change, grow, or render forgiveness.

& because it wouldn’t be a haleigh blog without it, I’ll leave you here with this:

“If you’re ever scared you’re a bad person, remember that bad people don’t care about being better.”