I can no longer comply
my compliant "part" needs a rest
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Well hello there. It has been yet another shitty week. Truthfully, this year has been shitty thus far. I’m blaming Mars in Cancer (I’m a cancer rising), the state of the world, and various personal things. It doesn’t seem to let up. None of it. I’m hanging on by a thread.
In therapy, we talk a lot about my “compliant” part. The child part of me who learned to be compliant in order to be safe. She showed up all of the time in school (you can read all about this in my book, chapter 2: Disability & Desire). As an adult, she shows up at work. She is deeply afraid of getting in trouble, doing something wrong, or standing up for herself in any way. What then happens is eventually she/I implode. As a child, this would look like holding it together all day until I got home where I would emotionally collapse. As an adult, it’s similar. I will mask until I can no longer mask only to then feel as though my anger and sadness are consuming me.
I have been trying to shrink myself since I was interrogated, I mean, tested, for learning disabilities in third grade. I haven’t been able to trust myself since. Being pathologized at a young age meant that I had less than a decade of life being able to trust my own experience. It has meant knowing I was considered “abnormal” longer than I knew I was “normal.”
When adults tell you you’re different, you believe them. Clearly, the adults around me knew me better than I did. They knew something was “wrong” with me. Some of my earliest memories revolve around me needing to be “fixed.” Thus, I have continued to believe adults in authoritative positions—even though I am an almost 40-year-old adult. I continue to look outside of myself. I continue to believe that everyone else knows what is best for me (and how to fix me). I continue to acquiesce, appease, fawn in order to survive. When I do speak up, I immediately feel scared, threatened, guilty.
I dream of being myself everywhere I go—without apology and without consequence. This doesn’t seem attainable in certain spaces in the current moment. But I continue to hope for the possibility. Truncating myself the way I have been is catching up with me. It no longer feels bearable. It is not a shape I can live in any longer.
I fear for my compliant part. What will happen if she doesn’t just sit down and shut up? What will happen if she uses her voice more? I’m trying to learn how to express myself more, especially in work situations. I’m trying to learn how to feel less fearful and guilty when I do speak up.
I’m really just trying to learn how to be myself and let the compliant part of me take a long deserved rest.
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Over 200 Higher Education Institutions Pledge to Resist Trump Attacks - Sharon Zhang
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