When I was younger, everyone used to tell me that I had “so much potential.” I would beam with pride as I spoke about my ambitions in life, waxing poetic about all the ways I wanted to change the world. When life at home was particularly lonely (as it often was), I would lose myself in the pages of my favorite books, and felt myself becoming someone else… someone important. I discovered prejudice and battled hatred alongside Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Through The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood taught me to deflect the pains of depression and hopelessness into soulful journals. And John Grisham’s endlessly thrilling collection of legal novels opened my eyes to a world of intelligence, intrigue, and perseverance… a world where the good guys usually win.
Hell-bent on escaping from my mother’s abusive grasp, I graduated at 17, and with my Grannie’s assistance, left home under the cover of night via an airplane bound for Houston. The plan was to find an apartment in Austin, attend the University of Texas and make my family proud. My mother’s wrath at my departure, combined with the fact that she’d spent all of the money my dad had given her for my college tuition, put a damper on my plans. Dad did what he could to help me, but like most abuse victims, I fell into a messy emotional spiderweb of guilt and shame, blamed myself, and eventually ended up back in Georgia with my mother.
I continuously subjected myself to endless rounds of angry arguments, physical abuse, and manipulation. I would like to say I didn’t know any better, but I did. I was simply weak. And she knew it… and she preyed upon my weakness at every given opportunity. I fell victim to her over and over again, not because I was stupid, but because I lacked a real sense of family. I can only blame so much of my loneliness on my mother… I long ago accepted that some of my pain was self-inflicted. And so I set out to recreate my life and create a sense of family on my own. I married Jonathan at 23, and finally began living the life of an “adult.” I worked 50-60 hours a week as a paralegal, attended college full-time and maintained a high A average, even with my Honors coursework. I joined a sorority and served in several leadership positions in my chapter and for the university’s Panhellenic Association. I had my sights set on Yale Law, and I wasn’t stopping until I was there. It seemed there was nothing I wasn’t capable of accomplishing if I set my mind to it.
And then life happened. In my junior year, I separated from my husband. In the midst of a painful divorce, I quit my job, then Atlanta to move to San Diego… to “find myself.” All I found was more emptiness and a higher cost of living. I didn’t know what I wanted or even what I needed… but I knew I wasn’t going to find it in California. And so, with a lot of help from Daddy, I moved back to Texas to once again be near my family… to figure out what’s missing in my life… to heal.
The healing process is difficult. I’ve been through all the stages of grief over and over… and at this point, I’m not even sure which demons I’m battling. I have all the love in the world with my Dad, my amazing stepmom of 25 years, my siblings and Grannie. I have some incredible friends, and I live a good life. But it’s still not enough.
I always hear her voice in the back of my mind, telling me I’m not good enough. Telling me I’ll never live up to my “potential,” pushing me down to make sure she still has control over me. I hear him telling me that I’ll never make it without him… saying that I’m just like her, and that I’ll never be able to commit to anything. That I don’t know what love is. And sometimes, I let them get to me… Sometimes, I think they’re right.
Perhaps I’m just one of many experiencing the Quarterlife Crisis… that mid-20‘s freak-out wherein you realize that you have accomplished virtually nothing from the long list of goals you set for yourself as a wide-eyed teenager, and honestly have no idea what you want to do when you “grow up.” George Bernard Shaw once said, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. It’s about creating yourself.” And since I’ve had very little luck in locating myself amongst the chaotic messes I’ve gathered along the way, I started thinking about what I want.
I want to find a job that inspires me – something that allows me to help people and maximize my “potential” – but I don’t know what that is. I’m passionate about law, but disheartened by adversarial nature of the legal system itself. I don’t want to spend my life fighting for causes I don’t believe in… so you can imagine my difficulty in finding a legal job that gives me a reason to wake up in the morning. It wouldn’t hurt to finally be doing something that makes my Dad proud… though I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to accomplish that. It doesn’t hurt to try.
I want to find a love that inspires me – someone who allows me to be myself, without judgments or unrealistic expectations… someone who understands that I’m not always as strong as I appear to be, but loves me anyways… someone who wants to take care of me just as much as I want to take care of him… someone who knows that I will give him so much more than I expect him to give me, but gives and gives in return anyways. But I’m not sure they make them like that anymore. And if they do, I’m not sure that I’m able to let my walls down, even if I’m ready and willing. I have occasional glimmers of hope, and those moments instill such a blissful feeling of peace and comfort… pure happiness… but those moments are fleeting. So, I’m probably striking a blow to my image as an independent modern woman by admitting that true love is the foundation for everything else I want in life. I don’t really care. I happen to like fairy tales, and it’ll be perfectly fine if I manage to live in one, even for a brief period of time.
I want to live a life that inspires me – full of love, laughter, music, creativity, passion and devotion. I want to see the world, meet new people, try new things. I want to appreciate my friends, love my family with all my heart, and do one thing every day that scares me. I want to create myself.
Peace, Love & Michelle 