Being “Strong” Gave Me the Emotional Maturity of A Toddler

How do I educate myself on learning to be a grown-up?

Ever since I was a little girl, I was taught I had to be a strong woman. Even if everything went to hell, and even if I was still a child, I was supposed to hold back tears and not let emotions take over.

It didn’t matter if it was my father, once again, calling me a pig because I was too fat for his standards. Or if it was my classmates bullying me because I was a freak nerd.

It didn’t matter what it was: if I cried, it meant I was weak.

It meant I had no dignity.

I was to need no comfort. I was to be a rock devoid of all feelings. I was to be emotionally self-sufficient.

I learned my emotions made other people uncomfortable…, particularly those who had triggered them or those who were supposed to help me learn to navigate them.

Showing my pain tended to bring forth mockery and punishment.

What is dignity?

They call it dignity.

You are supposed to prove you can keep your cool even if the whole world comes crashing down around you.

You have to be strong. Decisive. Unfazed. Always reacting in the most mature way.

I see the point, of course. After all, decisions made in moments of intense emotion can destroy what has taken us years to build.

And yet, I cannot help to think the message has been somehow misinterpreted.

A Goddamn Avalanche

You see, if you are in a situation in which you are spinning out of control, it makes sense to pause to collect your thoughts. You withdraw yourself from a scenario where your buttons are being pushed and then come up with the appropriate response.

But that’s not what most people are doing. I know I wasn’t.

Many of us resorted to dumping everything in a black hole inside our souls. We decided to ignore the snowballing effect of years of emotional neglect. “I am strong; I can get over this; I don’t need anything. I’m going to keep my dignity intact,” we said to ourselves.

And you know what came next?

A goddamn avalanche rolling down the hill to put us in our rightful place.

We had it coming.

Not A Pretty Sight

I have heard the cliché over and over again: women are better with this “emotions” thing.

We are supposed to instinctively know how to handle our hearts and silly feelings. We just know what to do.

Well, I don’t know about that. Either I didn’t come with the appropriate wiring, or all of that is just a pile of shit. However, what I can tell you is that I am completely uneducated when it comes to my emotions.

I usually don’t know how to name them. I don’t know what to do with them. Just trying to put them into words threatens to break me.

It’s not a pretty sight…My voice breaks, and tears instantly try to come forward.

Is it worth it? Sometimes I fear it is not. Why risk shedding all layers only to be left alone in the cold, naked?

However, the joke was on me. In my insistence on being strong, I let people hurt me so they wouldn’t know how much their actions affected me. I let all of their crap fall over me, all of the time thinking this proved I was powerful and resilient.

What do I do about this?

However, I am stubborn. Really, you have no idea. And I live in a perennial state of curiosity.

Therefore, I have found myself wondering, “What do I do about this? How do I educate myself on learning to be a grown-up?”

And yes, I wanted to know how I could do that while keeping my dignity intact.

LOL

See? That’s me still trying to maintain everything and everyone under control. It took me a while, but I saw no progress would be made as long as I kept on obsessing over keeping my cool and being the perfect representation of grace.

I realized that, sometimes, the only reasonable behavior is to lose my shit.

What a surprise to find out I have a right to feel destroyed. I have a right to bawl and make a fool out of myself, as long as I don’t cause harm to others. So do you…

The only indignity comes when you spend your whole life in a permanent state of numbness.

Soon, I found myself going home to let myself wail uncontrollably. Yes, I even did the crying on the floor thing — it felt great. I got a bit drunk in the comfort of my bedroom and ate foods I knew I would regret the next day. I even wrote quite a few sad poems, although I have kept the most pathetic ones out of publication.

No, I’m not going to do that every day. Still, this helped me make amazing discoveries.

Who would have thought I had the right to feel?

Just A Toddler

So, yes, I can now publicly admit that, emotionally, I was just a toddler, with no words to name my pain and no idea how to communicate it.

Now I’m learning.

They call it reparenting yourself. Basically, you give yourself the guidance and compassion you didn’t get before. It’s a dirty job, but for fuck’s sake, someone has to do it.

I’m starting by naming these feelings, one by one, as if they were little pets under my care. I have to know their needs and moods. How to feed them and how to train them.

So many things do not depend on me; I can only witness them. Sometimes I can argue back. Others, I have no choice but to withdraw myself from the situation, even if others keep on trying to pull me in.

I feel so inexperienced and vulnerable. But I guess that’s the thing…at least now I feel.