Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

What I’ve learned about being me

the question

I worked with a coach for a while, and every morning I fell into the exact same routine. I would send my check-in, show them what I cooked the day before before, send my daily weight numbers, and just do the thing. And every day, without really thinking about it, I’d end my message with the exact same phrase: “I appreciate you”.

It was never some sort of strategy to earn brownie points, I just sent how I felt. I felt gratitude, every day. Then one morning, I got a text back that asked: “why do you kept saying that“. I felt a lump in my throat.

My very first response was to say I’m sorry. I typed it out before I even had time to think about it or understand whether I had actually done anything wrong. Someone questioned the most ordinary expression of who I am, and I apologized for it out of complete reflex. It was like I had been caught doing something I shouldn’t be doing. The apology just came out, the way it always did, the way it had been coming out my whole life in a hundred different versions of that same moment. I have apologized for being me for as long as I can remember, and half the time, I never even knew what I was apologizing for.

the alien looks

I am someone who writes letters on fine stationery with wax stamps and I put my whole heart into something when I have something to say to someone because that’s the only way I know how to say anything. I notice things, I remember things, I feel things at a depth that sometimes surprises even me, and I think about things long after most people have moved on.

None of that has ever felt like a choice, it’s just how I’m built and exactly who I am. But I have watched people look at me like I’m an alien for it. They aren’t misunderstanding me, exactly. Misunderstanding implies someone is trying to figure you out and just getting it wrong. What I’m describing is more like a look that says the thing you just did doesn’t compute. They wonder why you did it, why you said it, and why you keep saying it. All the while, I’m standing there holding something that feels perfectly normal and healthy, and the person across from me is looking at it like I’ve handed them a grenade. That’s a weird kind of lonely and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.

what it costs

Not long ago, I wrote a letter to someone. This is something I do often but this particular letter was something else. What it said doesn’t really matter, but I will tell you I wasn’t sad when I was writing it. I was simply filled with immense gratitude. I was finally saying something that had been sitting inside me for a long time, fully and honestly and without holding any of it back, because that’s the only way I know how to communicate. When I finished, I walked out to my gym and shook for twenty minutes.

I did a 40 day water fast not long ago. The hardest part wasn’t the hunger. It was the silence and I learned that I could do it. That I could just be still with myself and survive it. That taught me something I’m still learning how to use. The terrifying part isn’t saying the true thing. It’s accepting that once it leaves you, it belongs to itself. The moment you release something true into the world, the only thing you owe it is the courage it took to send it.

nine years

I’ve called myself an imperfect human for as long as I can remember because that’s the most honest thing I know how to say about myself. I have hard days and things go wrong in my regular life all the time. I’m not built of steel and I’m certainly not this unbreakable thing everyone seems to think I am. I’m still learning but I am finally accepting the fact that I see the world through different eyes. CrossFit gave me nine years of that fight. It gave me nine years of people and moments and hard lessons that I am still sorting through.

not like others

That same coach mentioned a very personal diagnosis several times in one day. The way my brain works, I heard that as a signal. They told me something 7 times in one day, that meant I should probably pay attention so I did. I went home and bought books to better understand how they experienced the world. When they found out what I’d done, they got angry. I remember sitting with that reaction genuinely confused, because to me, that’s just what you do when something matters to you. You listen to them, follow the thread, and show up with everything you have because you don’t know any other way to show up. And when that gets handed back to you like you did something terrible, something in you grieves. Not because you were wrong, but because for a second you actually believed you might have been.

That moment helped me understand that my brain doesn’t work like other brains but it’s not something I did wrong. However…sometimes I wish I knew how to be some other kind of human. I wish I knew how to turn down the dial on myself so I wouldn’t catch people so completely off guard. I’ve never been able to figure out how to do it. Sure I’ve thought that. All the time.

Here is what I know now that I didn’t know when I started. My depth is not the problem. Feeling everything, thinking everything, the wax stamps and the long letters and the daily gratitude are not the problem. They never were. Seeing and feeling brings my life joy.

I accept I am different

Different is not something I’m carrying anymore. It’s not a wound, and it’s not a complaint. It’s just the truest, plainest thing I know how to say about the particular experience of being me.

We spend so much time in this community trying to be tough and unbreakable. If you’ve been carrying your own version of different around without ever saying it out loud, I just want you to know that I see it.

I’m just going to keep being exactly this, fully and who I am, because God said being me was never supposed to feel bad. It just took me a while to believe that.

*she smiles*….

Proverbs 31:25.