I feel like I was deformed before.
It was as if we had been programmed so that a huge part of us was deformed, mutant-like.
We were so good at excelling, and at being a group, with a shared identity.
To this day I know the ins and outs of exclusive groups, know how to perform in order to best achieve.
But for some reason I chose to let go of that narrative, and I don’t really know why. Because wasn’t I bred for success, for fitting in?
I think therapy had a lot to do with this. But I also thought that my grandmother’s death had something to do with it.
But it wasn’t her actual death, it was her looming one.
But she hadn’t died yet, so what I was dealing and struggling with all this time was the (thirty-six) years leading up to her death.
And I think it coloured my entire existence, really.
So if I seemed dark and gloomy at times (OK, a lot of the time), this was probably the reason why.
This was really hard to explain to anybody, because I’m certain you’ve seen a depressed 36 year-old, but a depressed 14 or 20 year-old who seemed to carry the world on her shoulders?
And that’s why I resisted the status quo for such a long time – because if the status quo meant death and coming to terms with the deaths of two people (my grandparents) who had effectively cared for me as an infant, why wouldn’t I run away from this?
It was like the Inferno to me. And I was constantly running.