MRSXXXXXX@GMAIL.COM. I excitedly registered my new married email address, unknowingly forfeiting a piece of my identity – trading my name for an honorific and his last name. No one asked me to make this trade; all of my soon to be sisters-in-law had retained their names in their email addresses. The whole family had the same email format firstname.lastname@gmail.com, but I CHOSE to be different. I chose to prioritize the idea of being someone’s wife over being myself. It wasn’t a conscious tradeoff, but in hindsight, I was quick to relinquish myself. When did I stop valuing who I was independent of others? What led me to believe the title, the rank, or the class defined me?
Where did I learn to forfeit my identity?
A few years ago, when asked to describe me, I said: “Oh, I’m just a wife and a mother, raised in an upper-middle-class family, who happens to like pretty things.” How disgusting, none of those are actually ABOUT ME as a person. Maybe a small descriptor of my relation to someone else, or money, or to material things, but they don’t tell you who I am? They don’t indicate my passions or dreams. They don’t communicate the challenges or circumstances that helped shaped my world view. At best, you might have a 15% chance of buying me a half-decent gift if you found something I deemed “pretty.” This might explain why people had/have such a hard time buying me gifts. How can you know someone well enough to buy them a thoughtful gift if they don’t even know themselves?
I’m reading Glennon Doyle’s Untamed right now.
She tells the story of when she began to lose herself – or rather when she started to be “caged.” I don’t know the moment, or moments, that led me to climb into a societal cage of my own willingly, but there are some parallels between Glennon’s story and mine.
Like Glennon, and any other good son or daughter, I was expected to be obedient and unquestioning in the company of adults. The phrase “children were to be seen and not heard” was repeated as a friendly reminder to sit down and be quiet. The refrain “because I said so” was common to indicate there was no additional room for discussion or questions.
Religion also played a major role in crafting my definitions of good and bad.
I learned that Eve’s original sin was eating from the tree of knowledge. The audacity of Eve to seek more information and take the initiative to learn. This story could really be told in a much more effective and far less oppressive way. Why isn’t it positioned to highlight the importance of faith? The tree of knowledge, really? Why is knowing a bad thing?
And like Glennon, I too found myself lying awake at 3 AM many mornings, looking to Google to decide the fate of my marriage. My queries were a little more ambiguous than Glennon’s.
- “I don’t know how to tell my husband what’s wrong.”
- “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
- “How do I describe what I’m feeling?”
- “I keep trying to describe what I’m feeling, and it feels like no one’s listening or understands.”
The challenge with abandoning myself was I didn’t even know “what” was broken? I just felt it, really deep inside. I would spend so much time stifling the feeling because I loved my husband; he was and is incredible. My children were perfect, and our family was a model. People on the outside would look in and see “perfection.” It just validated my belief that I had no right to yearn for more. I couldn’t communicate what I needed more or less because it all kept coming out as surface-level. It wasn’t more date nights; I needed……connection. It wasn’t more flowers; I needed….to be known – better than I knew myself.
That’s so incredibly unfair.
How do you ask the people around you to know you when you don’t know yourself? How do you ask the people that love you to really LOVE you when you don’t love yourself?
I still don’t really “know” myself. I am on the journey to becoming “untamed.” I often close my eyes and let my imagination run away with me. Sifting through my thoughts to determine what’s genuinely mine versus what I’ve been conditioned to think is still tough, but at least I’m aware now. Aware that I might have climbed into the cage, but also aware that I have the power to climb out, knowing there’s an entire wilderness awaiting me on the other side.
