It's like I only have half of a face on Facebook.
One of my friends talked recently about using Facebook as "smoke and mirrors" to hide what was really going on in her life. I told her that if smoke and mirrors was the only way for us to get through, then smoke and mirrors it shall be. Perhaps it's simply human nature to post only the warm and the fuzzy, but I'm tired of feeling like there is no place for the stories in my life. I have always invisibly felt this, but Facebook is just bringing this truth to the surface.
All throughout the year there are these Facebooking opportunities to post stories and memories of a person's life. I love reading the stories, but they also make me feel. . . .well, they make me feel exactly the way I used to when I was growing up, actually. Hmmm. . . . very interesting. I remember how when I was a young person how envious I felt of the stories I heard from my friends. Not envy for the obvious reasons of a superficial jealousy, but because of how bad my own stories made me feel. My stories made me feel like I was an inferior person, because even from a very young age, I always knew that there was something inherently "wrong" with my stories, something "wrong" with me. I also knew that I was never supposed to tell my stories. I was ashamed of my life, ashamed of the stories that comprised my life, and that made me feel like I was less than everyone else around me. . . .both friends and family alike.
And so I kept my stories to my self.
I was twenty five years old before I started to tell my story, and I think it was only because I had to. . . .my life was falling apart, and the panic attacks were creating an internal prison from which I could not escape. My best friend in high school knew nothing at all about my so called secret life. . . .no one did. . . . not even my mother before she died. When everyone around me was excitedly sharing stories of first kisses and first sexual experiences, I cringed in horror to know that I could never share the truth of my real first kiss, of my real first sexual experiences. And my husband, bless his heart, married a woman he honestly knew nothing about, with a collection of stories that in the end were just too dark and too intense for him to live with. And so he did what I was afraid people would do once they heard my stories. . . .he turned his back and walked away from the damaged wife he would have never chosen had HE known the truth of my stories.
Perhaps the wedding vows should have been rewritten to include, "In sickness and in health, In stories dark and light, 'Till death do you part." Maybe then he would have been able to honor his vows.
I honestly don't blame him for walking away. I've been trying to run away from these stories for my entire life. They're not the stories that I want. I would never have chosen these stories. My life journey has irrevocably been altered by these stories. And they're not the stories that I want to share, either. But I'm tired of holding back the truth of my stories just to make other people feel comfortable.
These stories are like shrapnel inside of my mind and body. . . .and so they need to be released, because they are the very truth of who I am, the very fabric that interfaces every step of the life path I have been forced to walk upon. And, yes, I do grow weary of always having to "put my best face forward," because I'm tired of having only half of a face.
So in the famous words of Marilyn Monroe, "I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."