when did belonging become more important than becoming

cognitive dissonance chewed me up and spat me out mangled and unidentifiable.

I have been hard for most of my life. Comprised of right angles, sharp bones, and often an even sharper tongue.

My first word was “f*ck,” I’ve been told (epic, I know), as a ball I was playing with rolled off the deck of our childhood home.

When my step-dad first met me, he worried my mom abused me, based on the myriad of bruises and scratches that covered my little body. It took him 5 minutes of watching unruly toddler June gravitate like a magnet to every sharp corner in the house to quickly dispel the concern.

I never crawled as a baby. I skipped straight to walking. A move my knees are paying for as I creep ever closer to 30.

Chaos and conviction have shadowed me through life.

Ballerina lessons, nope.

Gymnastics classes, nope.

Piano, hell no (6 years and 14 teachers before my parents finally gave up on this one, if that tells you anything).

I was rough. We would go to my aunt and uncle's house, and I would spend hours wrestling with my same-age male cousin until he caved and admitted defeat.

I was loud. Forever reprimanded for not using my “inside voice.” My stepmom, D, would literally charge me money from my petulant joke of an allowance for stomping around her house (and leaving lights on, and yelling, and incorrectly answering impromptu multiplication questions, etc.)

“Bull in the china shop” was a commonly used phrase as childhood play would inevitably end in a broken lamp or a cut knee. They laughed at me. They did not embrace me.

I was synical, catering to the masochism of my father in an attempt to garner his validation.

I made my mom cry; the angst and insecurity I bottled at my dad’s house (for survival there) would spill over into harsh words and unnecessary anger directed at my mom.

At 11 years old, I was dropped off at sleepaway camp for the first and only time. My mom’s parting words to me were terrifying: “Don’t leave your face like that, you look like a bitch. Smile.” And while I can’t disagree with her advice, it was probably warranted, that may not have been the best way to convey the message.

Nothing about me has ever been delicate, ladylike, or remotely soft. None of those qualities were innate, nor would they have served me well, but it didn’t take long for me to become supremely aware of how much space these qualities took up where there wasn’t any room for me.

I began to gravitate towards tall girls as my friends; they made me feel small, safe, and cared for.

Because I saw myself so dysmorphically, I felt larger than life. HUGE.

I became acutely aware of my presence wherever I went.

I started to compare myself to other girls for whom puberty was similarly striking, but, unlike for me, it looked elegant on them, draping their petite figures in soft curves and newfound length.

Comparison planted its seed in my eyes and grew to eclipse all clarity. It tangled with the reprimands of my youth…

Too loud

Too clumsy

Too emotional

Too sharp

Too much

Too much

Too much

And yet, somehow never enough?

So I erased myself.

Not all at once.

Just little moments here and there where I chose to cloak my body, stifle my words, hide my feelings, defer my needs.

Like a chameleon, I took on just enough of those around me to cater seamlessly to whatever responses I intuited they coveted most.

In college, my friends would see me around campus and try to wave or say hi. But behind my ever-present sunglasses and noise-canceling headphones, their enthusiasm was for not.

I masked my shame and shrank my body until I could awkwardly squeeze into whatever space there was left to me.

But, much like shoving a square-edged peg into an organically shaped hole, there was friction and resistance. Imperfection barked at my aching angles. My hardness did not lessen as I ceased to exist.

If anything, it fortified as my color and joy drained, and all that remained was the hand-laid brick wall around my heart constructed in my youth.

Happiness and hope scared me. Unfamiliar as they were, they became forbidden fruit to my starving soul. I was the one who despaired, whose harsh sarcasm was good for a laugh or a leer behind the back of someone who no doubt deserved the biting criticism. I could protect and defend, but not nurture.

I knew how to hurt with my words; it was a rite of passage in my upbringing. Targeting vulnerabilities and using them as deflections against those who threatened my own.

I was only ever taught to hurt people with my hurt. I attracted darkness in others who divulged their fears and wounds to me, but rarely their hopes and loves.

I was known for a good wallow or gripe, but if I shared a nice word or sentiment, my friends would meet it with surprise and a ragging comment on “what did I do with June.”

I came to embrace it. If this is what makes me desirable and friend-worthy, I guess it’s all I have a right to be.

Cognitive dissonance chewed me up and spat me out mangled and unidentifiable. My deeply tangled sense of identity found itself in a state of perpetual siege.

For the entirety of my 20s, a battle has raged in my mind between who I want to be and all that I am not. All of my tryings and failings to belong, and my far and few attempts to actually become.

I tried on friends like hats, but in the end, my inability to bring anything to the table and my insecurity that they would someday recognize this led me to push connections away or form bad ones that only fueled my inner discontent.

I shied away from color, curating apartments with neat, beige perfection.

I washed my bruised and battered identity in the same.

I was supremely boring.

No longer too much, but far, far too little.

Too insignificant.

Too forgettable.

Too curated.

Too empty.

The harsh cuts I made to my once jagged corners of self had widdled me into oblivion.

I no longer had substance left to fit anywhere at all.

So I’m starting from the beginning. Rebuilding this time only myself, no walls necessary.

Instead of inflexible bricks to support my new home, I’m choosing color. I’m choosing joy. I’m choosing soft fabrics and floral patterns. I’m constructing large stained-glass windows that let in the light. I’m building doors for friends, new and old, lookouts for spying, and gardens for musing, and lakes for swimming.

I want hidden passageways, disco balls, sunlight, and fields to run in.

I want sprawling blank space so that I might fill in more of my world as I grow BIG.

I want wildflowers to bloom where I step and rain to fall when I’m kissed.

I want to be warm and spread warmth with my touch.

I want to smile and make the world a better place for it.

I want to believe in the unbelievable.

I want to grow like Alice by embracing all that I might never make sense of, all that I am, all that I can be, and all that I am becoming.

I want to become so much that I might one day belong undilutedly and uncompromisingly to myself.

soul goals

In recent months, I have painted the walls of my home green, blue, purple, and yellow.

I display momentos once relegated to drawers and bins with pride and care.

I walk past mirrors with blissful ignorance, content to be who I want to be rather than look how others expect me to look.

For once in my adult life, I find myself able to keep the plants alive and thriving.

Yesterday, I hung disco balls in my living room window. They refract the light streaming in, making it dance for me. May they dance their way into the depths of my soul, so that I, too, can live and thrive here.

Forever a work in progress, but now at least, a work of art.

-June

I invite you to stay and be seen here.

for words with nowhere else to go

unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between

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