A Turning

Well, I have attracted a vocal hater! I guess I have arrived. When I was told, I immediately braced myself against the reaction. Not that of the opinion-giver, mine.

The thing is, it didn’t come. I didn’t disappear into shame or fear. I had evidently wasted her time with my ridiculous ideas. Okay, I get that, actually. Often, my first response to something unfamiliar, or to something I don’t like for some reason, is to throw it out. I reject you. It. This. Other. You’re stupid. Wrong. Shut up.

The need to make my opposition known takes over sometimes, too. It rarely feels good after I do it, but it is a bit of a compulsion. It creates in me the thing I suppose I’m trying to instigate in the person to whom I am reacting. I feel embarrassed. Why did I have to make my opinion known? What is that?

Different from standing up for an ideal or against something like bigotry, it reflects a level of intolerance -- of difference, of variety, of the many. An expression of violence. I know it in myself, as well. Still, I will stay at the edge of the sandbox, neither tearful nor angry.

I think of my young self, the little girl, the teenager, the iterations that followed. I turn to her, and make sure she is okay.

Dear Younger Self,

You will not always be devastated when others reject you. There will be a time when it doesn’t erase you. There will be a time when time passes, and you’ll feel the width and depth of your own capacity. There will be a time when meaning is in the contribution itself. A time when you are no longer chasing validation. A time when the gesture itself is the gift. People have a right to reject your ideas, to reject you. How they do it is theirs to decide.

There will be a time when you are able to tend to your expressions with love, even when surrounded by pickpockets.

Young One, I am writing from a time when time has passed, and I am sending this message into the wider world, celebrating the privilege of being ready and able to do so. I am writing to my mother, the line of mothers, to my other, to you.

With love,

From the woman you have become