Here Against My Will

Originally published on the Oxytocin Chronicles.

There is a running joke between a few of my coworkers and me that one day I will write an autobiography and it will be a series of memoirs titled “[Blank] Against My Will.”

This started from a one-on-one with my coworker, Jon, when I started dating my current partner. I was describing how well he treated me and how obviously he adored me and I was…complaining. “I didn’t want this!” I lamented, “I’ve been here three months. I was supposed to be alone. I was supposed to be finding myself. I wasn’t supposed to meet a guy like him who loves me like that.”

“How hard it must be,” he had joked, “to be loved against your will.”

I know you’d never guess it from my personality or writing, but I don’t enjoy being the center of attention. At a point in my life, I felt incredibly unseen, so I sought it out, but it never made me feel good. Those closest to me know I lean more introverted than you’d ever guess. I can work a room, I can entertain a crowd. It exhausts me. It doesn’t feel authentic.

I’m at my best one-on-one. In a crowd, I perform. I don’t mean to, I just don’t know any other way.

When I was born, I was born quiet. So quiet, in fact, that both my grandmothers standing eagerly in the hallway cried because they thought I was stillborn. According to my mother, I came into this world, eyes wide open, quiet and observant. Even in church, people would compliment my parents, “I didn’t even realize you had a baby with you. She is so quiet and well-behaved.”

We all know that didn’t last long.

When I learned to speak, I was the child who would ask “why?” Why did I have to believe in a certain god just because I had been baptized before I could speak? Why did I have to wear pants that matched my shirt to go to kindergarten? Why did I have to clean my room if it was going to get messy again? My father’s favorite story to tell about me used to be this: he was upset with me because my room was a mess and he had asked me to clean it. I looked up at him in his anger, calmly, and responded, “Daddy, I’m only four.”

As I got older, I became more unapologetically myself. I started out as an awkward kid. Gangly, uncouth, with a unibrow, braces, and thick hair on my upper lip. I was opinionated. I was smart. But I was odd-looking, so no one paid attention. They more or less dismissed me, wrote me off as weird, and occasionally bullied me (which made me really funny).

Then, like all children, I entered puberty. Puberty made me conventionally attractive. Conventionally attractive people get noticed. They are also expected to behave a certain way. They’re chill, disinterested. They go with the crowd.

But I wasn’t meant to be popular. I wasn’t meant to be cool. I was just a weirdo who got kinda hot.

This caused more issues for me than you’d think. In fact, I explicitly remember a dormmate of mine freshman year telling me, “your personality doesn’t match your face.”

Society expects pretty women to sit down and shut up. I have never been particularly skilled at either.

I soon found myself in positions of being accidentally listened to.

In group projects, I just wanted the work done. I didn’t care who did it; I’d do it all myself if necessary. So, I often found myself delegating or picking up slack. I did not want to lead, I just wanted the work done.

In work, I did not chase promotions. Similar to college, there was work that needed to be done for the success of the company. I saw this work, I saw no one doing it, so I did it. I was quick at it. It wasn’t hard. I didn’t realize there was anything special about doing work that needed to be done.

In life, certain things made me want to claw my skin off. I did not move to New York to inspire anyone. I did not call off my wedding to make a statement. I just looked at my life and hated it and wanted to hate it less, so I made changes.

No one is more surprised than me to hear that I’ve accidentally inspired people. Which leads me to my first micro-memoir:

Leadership Against My Will.

I am only here today because I’ve witnessed the repercussions of settling. The thing about a traumatic childhood is it will teach you to survive. Some of the survival tactics I learned, I am quite proud of. I am independent. I am empathetic. I am strategic. I am adaptable.

Some, I am not so proud of. I can be manipulative. I can be vindictive. I can be ferocious. I can work a room to get what I need from an audience. I can rally a crowd or become the center of attention. Not because I enjoyed it, but because I needed it to feel loved. That one, I got from dear old dad.

One day, I looked in the mirror and I saw my father. I saw the addiction in my body, I saw the neglect of my partner and children, and, worst of all, I heard it—all the voices. Of family members. Of friends. “How sad she ended up just like him. What a waste.”

Not even a week later, I started therapy.

So there I was, conventionally attractive, stubborn, and now—god help us all—mentally well. I looked at my life and realized what wasn’t working and I changed it. I had been under the impression it would be harder. It wasn’t.

Overcoming the fear was the hardest part.

Despite my best efforts, I cannot sit here and watch people settle for mediocre lives because they have convinced themselves that settling is somehow less terrifying than pursuing happiness.

My greatest fear in this world is to be famous. I don’t want the mess that comes with that for me or the people I love.

My biggest dream in this world is to be successful and powerful enough that people listen when I speak to the point that I can help as many people as I can live lives that they are proud of.

It is not fair to me that I was privileged enough to go to therapy and turn my life around when other people do not have that chance. I could have been another statistic, and I get to be happy. Most people would just say “thank you” and move on but I can’t do that. It’s not fair.

I know I can’t save the world. But I also can’t just sit here and silently enjoy the life I’ve created for myself without at least telling you how much easier it is to have it than you think.

Because I’m still that little girl who asks, “why?”

Why can’t everybody have this? Why can’t everybody be fulfilled? Why can’t everybody feel loved?

If I had my way, I’d drag you all kicking and screaming from the lives you’ve settled for into better ones. But my therapist says I’m still a bit of a codependent so I’ll have to settle for writing this instead.

Things You Won’t Want to Hear, But Should

I’ve learned all my lessons the hard way, and I really hope you don’t have to. But let me state a couple of things in simple sentences just in case you need to hear them. You’re welcome to disagree with me, but I’m not wrong.

1 - Loving someone should be easy.

I thought I wasn’t cut out for partnership. I had spent so many of my childhood years giving emotionally and mentally to my own caregivers that by the time it came for me to have my own romantic relationships, love felt like a burden. Showing up felt like a chore. Giving felt like an obligation. I did it, and sometimes I was even good at it, but it felt like something I had to do and was supposed to do. I thought maybe I was just selfish or I sucked at love. Turns out, I have all the energy in the world for the right person, and loving him, supporting him, and showing up for him is the easiest thing I have ever done. On my worst days, I still have everything in the world left for him and him only. It should be that easy. It should be that simple. If it’s not, you should re-evaluate.

Life is hard. Love shouldn’t be. ESPECIALLY not in the beginning. Period.

2 - You are completely replaceable at your job.

I’m a workaholic. I love my job. But my relationship with my job will change in the future because there are certain people I am NOT replaceable to — my future husband and my future children. I respect my boss and I love my work, but if I died tomorrow, they would hire another me. My husband would lose his wife and my children would lose their mother and that is a role that is not easily replaceable. I enjoy working hard, I enjoy doing well.

But you can always get another job. You cannot get another life. Adjust your priorities accordingly.

3 - People’s reality is their own perception and you cannot change it.

This applies to politics. This applies to values. This applies to experiences. I cannot believe, truly, that in 2023 I still see people arguing on the internet. You will accomplish nothing. You will change no one. You do not have to agree with people, but anger and ire are not the way to send a message. Action is. People will only learn through experience or curiosity. Commenting on an Instagram thread about animal rights or screaming at your aunt about the next election on Facebook has changed someone’s mind zero times. If you’re passionate about something, study it. Write about it. Join causes that support it. If you need to say something, do so calmly with the recognition that even the most well-researched and validated arguments may not change someone’s mind. Realize, also, that ignorance is a cross people cling to tighter than many religions. The truth is terrifying. People are not awful, they are scared. Anger will not fix that.

We need more softness in this world. More understanding. We have forgotten that we are dealing with human beings. Other people’s partners. Other people’s daughters. Other people’s loved ones. Kindness. Compassion. Care. Always—or as often as you can. Otherwise, just don’t engage. It’s much more peaceful, I promise.

4 - Happiness is quiet.

Share the big moments in your life, fine. Not every moment is a big moment. The loudest people in the room are often the most miserable—I know this from experience. You are fooling no one but yourself when you advertise a perfectly curated life. We’ve all had social media long enough. We all know. True contentment is quiet.

If you find yourself needing to show everyone how happy you are, you might not be.

5 - Starting over will always be more fulfilling than living half a life.

If you have not seen Daniel Sloss’s Jigsaw show on Netflix, do that. But there is one (of many) line that changed my life when I heard it. In speaking about leaving a long-term relationship, Sloss asks this: “One, do I admit that the last [x] years of my life were a waste? Two, do I waste the rest of my life?”

This does not just apply to romantic relationships. This applies to anything in your life you’ve committed to that no longer serves you: jobs, places, friendships, hobbies. Learn all you can about sunk-cost fallacy and then stop falling for it.

Have you wasted time, money, love, effort, whatever? Sure. Probably.

How much more are you willing to waste? Answer yourself. Honestly.

Preaching Against My Will

I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I continue to watch people settle.

Naively, I am trying to save the world from the things that ruined me as a child. I am trying to save you all from addiction, from loneliness, from depression, from divorce. I am trying to warn you all and only some of you will listen or admit to yourselves that you need to make a change, and that’s fine.

Some of you will think I’m crazy and self-righteous, and that’s probably also true.

It’s entirely possible I don’t know anything at all and I’ve just gotten incredibly lucky.

But if I’m right…

You have one very important question to ask yourself, and I hope you answer honestly:

Does my life mean enough to me to change it?

And if you do, let me know. As the prophet Troy Bolton said, “we’re all in this together.”

I want humanity to be a community again. It starts with us.

And, just like change, it starts with you. Maybe if we stop settling in our own lives, we’ll stop settling as a people. As a society. As a world.

A girl can dream.