“There are two roads to walk down, and one road to choose. . .” ~ Dana Glover

I have two diametrically opposed desires for my life.  Yes.  As in, the rest of my life, this is the it of all its.  Perhaps if this blog were 100% anonymous, I might write about them – but most likely not.  It’s one thing when you’re young and trying to figure things out, to solicit advice and talk with friends, but when you get to be older, and especially when it’s something that pretty much determines the course of the rest of your life. . .  I just feel that at some point you have to figure things out on your own.  You don’t need others’ ideas and thoughts – well-meaning and insightful  though they might be – undermining or confusing you.  Inner nest and all that.  What you need is complete solitude of mind, so that you are certain that you are making choices based only on your thoughts, your feelings, your desires and experiences.

But even before I “grew up,” I was always like that.  I told a fellow blogger that I didn’t disclose to my family that I was diagnosed as bipolar until months after the fact, even though they were paying for the psychiatrist.  I wasn’t ashamed, I was re-framing.  I had to decide what this fact meant to me, to my life, from the inside, and completely independent of anyone’s input.  It was very important to me to make sure that the attitudes and methods of acceptance and feelings and thoughts were mine alone.  I didn’t want anyone else’s advice, even good advice, confusing or clouding what my brain and body were telling me.

I guess that I had to make some kind of peace with the situation, and get my thoughts in order.

Like I said, though, that attitude doesn’t just apply to my current state of being or my bipolar.  I was always the free-thinking, independent, anti-popular-sentiment girl, even among my friends.  They were (and are) wonderful individuals, so they let me just be my very different self and loved me for it.  Thank you.

But it was never a matter of rejecting what the crowd did simply because they did it, or brushing off the snide remarks and innuendos of classmates externally while hurting internally.  I mean, yes, there were times when I hurt inside, more deeply and consumingly than I could ever describe.  But I know now that was because of my undiagnosed bipolar and not external abusiveness.

I remember being made fun of on the school bus in the fourth or fifth grade, because I still played with Barbie dolls.  Water off a duck’s back.  It didn’t matter to me what other people thought, and it still doesn’t.  Shit, by the time I had been in high school two weeks no one bothered to make fun of me (and I was very different), because they knew I would either give it right back to them, or more likely, ignore them altogether.

I like to give my parents credit for raising me to have such confidence and sense of self.  They certainly encouraged me in it, and didn’t try to squelch me, even when I must have driven them bonkers.  ;)  They gave me a solid foundation, they encouraged me to investigate the world around me on my own terms, and to question everyone and everything I encountered.  There was never any attitude of, “This person is an adult – or a teacher or a police officer or a doctor – so what they say is right, and you cannot contradict them.”  They taught me respect, but they taught me to look at everyone for who they were, whether it was my best friend or my eighth grade principal, and evaluate them all with the same yardstick.  And they always backed me 110%.  I think that was a really important component, knowing my parents would take my word over my teachers’ (or pretty much anyone’s), and go to bat for me when necessary.  Although honestly, by about the sixth grade, it wasn’t really necessary for them to ever step up to the plate.  I handled things.  And I don’t just mean I handled things, I handled things.

Case in point – I had an extended illness in my final year of middle school hell, and I missed a lot of time.  So much that my parents and I met with all of my teachers to see how we could actually accomplish the task of getting me passing grades so that I could leave that rat hole.  My Algebra teacher spoke up during the meeting, with this I’m-so-kind-and-helpful-and-altruistic attitude, and said to me, “Well, I’ve already reduced your daily homework assignments by a lot.”  And I looked her dead in the eye, before anyone could say a thing, and replied, “And did I ask you to do that?”  I wasn’t trying to be a teenaged shit, I was merely pointing out that the action had been solely her choice, and though I did appreciate it, I was in no way obligated to be grateful to her for her decisions.

And then there was the – well, I guess the accurate term for it would be tongue-lashing – I gave my principal a few days later.  It was her, my parents, and myself in her office.  I’m not sure what set me off, I know it had to do with the above issue of me being graduated from middle school and the petty stances held and games being played by some of my teachers (I seriously would not have destroyed their fragile and messed up senses of self so completely if they weren’t trying to compensate for their unhappy existences by attempting to play God with my life).  So the four of us – Miss B~, my mom, my dad, and I – sat in her office, and I laid into her.  And she was flabbergasted, to say the very least.  She did initially try to get in a word or two, but I think she eventually just realized it was a losing battle for her (my parents stayed virtually mum, because they knew).  My mother still remembers that incident, and will tell me, “I just don’t think she had any idea what to do or say,” (I get that a lot, even now).  Said principal did, actually, walk out of that meeting with a newfound respect for me, which in retrospect makes me realize that she was a whole lot smarter than I ever imagined.

There are more stories, many more stories.

I do give my parents credit.  They allowed  me to cultivate my confidence and sense of self.  Another thing my mother told me recently was that she didn’t worry about me, because I had such an innate esteem and assurance in myself that she knew that whatever happened in my life, I would always “land on my feet.”  This is true, despite the recent temporary lapse.  I am back, firmly standing my ground, and ain’t no one gonna knock me down again.

But I give myself credit, as well.  My sister (the other one) was raised in the same house, by the same parents, with the same fairness, love, and support, and her self-image was always terrible.  I know that we had different experiences outside of our home, but this goes above and beyond and back to when I first met her 30+ years ago.   It may be improving a little as she gets older, it may not.  These are things I would know if we ever interacted.

Culmination of this post being that I decided I wasn’t going to take it, I wasn’t going to let people get by merely on age or credentials or authority, that I was going to make them prove to me why I should respect them.  Most people come to this (if they’re lucky enough ever to ever do so), I would say around their mid-thirties, at the earliest.  I came to it at three.

Moral of the story:  Courage of conviction.  Strong sense of self.  Being certain that whatever life throws your way, you will, in fact, “Land on your feet.”  Just as I will with this decision before me.

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