Good Little Girl

"I too sat in the midst of many selves. The Pleaser, the Performer, the Perfectionist- my trinity of P's. I was learning how closely these old roles were connected to another powerful role that I played out: the Good Little Girl."

This Good Little Girl went to bachelorettes and seemed embarrassed, shocked, humiliated at the plethora of sex gifts given. She went to engagement parties and tried to act civilized, went to a club right after and tried to act uncivilized. She went to church the next day and tried not to rustle her bulletin, sitting next to her friend's dad. She hung out with kids the next day, trying to make them like her, taking risks, being spontaneous. She tried to believe that someone else could actually like her, even though she didn't know who "she" really was.

"She was that part of me that had little self-validation or autonomy, who tended to define life by others and their expectations, by collective values and projections. As a woman I sometimes felt that I had been scripted to be all things to all people. But when I tried, I usually ended up forfeiting my deepest identity, my own unique truth as God's creature."

God is estatic over me. He rejoices in who I am each day. He's maybe ordained this summer so that I can get over the fear of expressing myself artistically or put relationships in my life so that I can walk the path to the cross with Him, experiencing healing en route.

"My Good Little Girl endured everything sweetly, feared coloring outside of the traditional lines, and frequently cut herself out of her real thoughts and feelings. She was well adapted to thinking other people's thoughts and following the path of least resistance."

I want to be accomodating, for people to be happy with every decision that I'm making. I've gotten better at coloring outside of the traditional lines, but not at inserting my own feelings into situations. I don't know how to use myself as my foundation, letting my own thoughts and feelings guide the way, without getting so swayed by others.

"At times she seemed like an orchid in a hothouse: fragile, pleasing, someone who always ended up being pressed between the pages of someone else's scrapbook. Much of my life I'd found principal roles expressed mainly in the pages of someone else's life. I was someone's mother, someone's life, someone's Sunday school teacher, someone's teacher, someone's employee. Wonderful things. But down deep, at soul level, who was I?"

I'm good at being Miss Gardener, YUTES leader, roommate, daughter, friend, social planner, taking notes, an energetic presence. I don't know who I am beyond these expectations of the roles that I fill. Maybe that's why I get so excited when a six-year-old in the Ferry Building on a Sunday afternoon yells my name and I get so excited to see him when I'm with my friends. I don't know who I am apart from that.

"Now oddly, I could feel the intimations of an unknown woman locked away inside of me who wanted life and breath, who wanted to shed what wasn't real and vital and recover that which was. I felt the vibrations of a deeper, authentic self who wanted to live out her own unique vision of individuality and embrace her own mystery. Who was this self inside of me who cried out to be?"

I don't know my mystery yet, but I'm working on it...

"During the previous few weeks I had been reading the poetry of T.S. Eliot, who at times seemed like a soulmate to me. In his 'Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' I found my story, the quiet agony of someone who came upon an unsuspecting darkness buried in midlife and met the overwhelming question:
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?...
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room"

I read this poem my junior year in high school and remember it vividly. It struck me even then, even though poetry is usually mind-boggling. I recall the desert imagery and the poignancy with which T.S. Eliot describes his life.

"My life felt measured out in lumps too small. And there was a bewitching music from a distant room I couldn't find. Voices dying to be heard. Did I dare disurb the universe with in myself?"

These voices are usually overshadowed by others' expectations and my own fear of following the path laid out before me.

"Believe me, I wanted to shove all this away and pretend it didn't exist. But I couldn't. Life tasted of cardboard and smelled of stagnant air. At times I found myself shut in a closet of pain, unable to find the door. In my blackest moments I actualled about fantasized about running away from home to find the vital part of me that I had lost."

I want to run away when I see Alex on the street, when I've made myself to vulnerable, when I know I've messed up, when I get come back to my apartment and realize that the life that I've created isn't the same one that I've imagined for myself.

All quotations come from "When the Heart Waits" by Sue Monk Kidd, per Wimbo's recommendation... my own thoughts are interspersed throughout.