Hiding behind the skin that is the same color as your mom’s, and the eyes that are an exact replica of your dad’s, you’re continuing to blossom as the brainwashed version of yourself that has been built by the people who are just as damaged as you. You watch them stuff their mouths with potatoes as they form words that you don’t agree with. They wrinkle their brows and mumble their truths and you’ve lost your appetite. They notice, of course. They say you must eat your potatoes, just as they are doing. Spit out the spuds, push yourself away from the table. You aren’t like them, and you aren’t apologetic.
Each of us are born into families, and these family members help shape our lives from the day we're born until the day we die. But there comes a time when we become liable for our own actions and are able to make our own conscientious decisions. Sometimes, these personal choices are similar to ones your family would want you to make, but sometimes they're not. You could feel like a rebellious child for moving to a different city or state, for choosing to watch a different news channel than the one your parents watch, or maybe you've chosen to become a vegetarian even though your family is full of die-hard meat lovers. Let me tell you this: it is okay. Sometimes you probably don't feel like it is, but it is.
One thing I've started to notice over the past few years since I've been in college is the weight of family on my life, even though I'm a fully capable adult and out on my own. The struggle is this: we want to make our families proud and do things we know they would want us to do, but what if we don't see eye-to-eye with these things once we're finally old enough to think for ourselves? We've been brought up in this one type of lifestyle, but we begin realizing that we're not happy living that way, and we start seeing flaws in it. So we start living another way, but feel guilty when we go home and our parents begin asking us about politics, religion, or controversial topics, and suddenly there's an elephant in the room when our parents realize their precious angel child isn't the same anymore. Gasp. They have realized that we know we can be whoever we want to be. This is the best part of growing up, and it's also the biggest internal conflict.
All of our years growing up, we're put into this cookie-cutter and when it's time for college, we're pushed out of the cutter and every day, we change into our true shape a little bit more. And this is totally okay! If everyone was the same - thought the same, liked the same things, wore the same things - nothing interesting or innovative would happen. We need diversity, and as individuals, we need to keep our own personal self-health in check. We owe our parents respect, but we don't owe them the possibility of lost opportunities for our own success and happiness. Yes, we share their DNA and their last name, but we aren't the same people as they are. We are each our own person, with our own life, and our own voice that deserves to be heard.
If you haven't allowed yourself to be different, there's a certain hell inside you that has stopped you from saying so much. This is the same hell that has stolen the words you never allowed yourself to say and the same things you never allowed yourself to feel. And it's fostered by a fear that makes you feel unworthy, just because you think differently. You don't need to feel inferior and you shouldn't be afraid to be selfish in this way. Experience your own rebirth and feel the clarity of you not being your father, your mother, your siblings, your past, or your addictions. You're not your failed expectations in high school, your breakups and breakdowns, your battles lost or the pain you've caused. Once you stop looking around at what's expected of you, and start looking inward at who you really are, the pieces of your life will begin settling into place. Because your parents don't deserve a prize for their beliefs, neither do you, and your parents don't deserve a bashing for their beliefs, and neither do you. We all have a place in this vast, vast world.
You deserve to go find yours.
“Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.” – Walt Whitman
