I am a fraud.
At least that’s what Sandra likes to tell me. That every ounce of accomplishment I have greedily raked towards myself, like a dragon hoarding gold, found me by pure happenstance, not because I am intelligent, and thoughtful, and forward-thinking in a way that allows me to outline multiple different scenarios and their varying potential outcomes. That is luck, not brilliance, Sandra tells me.
Truthfully, I don’t know what happened to Sandra to make her such a raging bitch. She delights in my misery and rejoices in my pain. It isn’t a successful day for Sandra if she hasn’t brought me to tears at least once. And on the days when I can’t move… when the metaphorical elephant is plopped comfortably on my chest and each breath rakes its jagged nails along my insides?
Those are Sandra’s best days.
She has won and her celebrating is so fucking obnoxious. She has loud house music pumping through the same shitty speakers that teenage boys in the 90s thought were the perfect accessory to their ‘92 Civics. Just crap beats pouring through tinny, haphazardly installed speakers in the trunk of her car. There are strobe lights and fog machines, and someone somewhere has a whistle that they’re blowing obsessively. And there’s Sandra, smack dab in the middle of it all, glow sticks swinging around her head and a poorly executed version of the Carlton moving her wiry body as she rejoices in my misery.
You’d think I’d end this relationship with Sandra. Clearly, she’s not a good friend, and my best interests aren’t her main concern. She doesn’t cheer me on in taking big risks in my life, or tell me that my hair looks nice when I am trying something new. She hates my freckles and likes to remind me that flabby arms are essentially a one-way ticket to hell. She undermines my value, convinces me that I am not doing anything well, and looks upon me with complete disdain. But Sandra and I have been together for as long as I can remember, so to just cut her off feels cruel.
Not to totally shit on Sandra, she has her good moments. She’s pulled me out of realities I didn’t need to be in any longer - her ruthlessness has definitely saved me a time or two, and she’s really good at holding up a mirror to show me the relationships in my life that are causing just as much harm as she is.
It’s an interesting reality when you reach the level of self-awareness that shows you that the creation of your own worst enemy was something you didn’t just allow, but facilitated. Sandra is a bitch of the highest order, but I love her, because she is me.
Ending complicated relationships, especially those of your own making, can be tricky, and I’ve sought professional help along the way to release these cruel thoughts. They give us these tools, the societal “they,” that tells us, “You are what you think.” And then leave us alone with these thoughts. With these cruel and hurtful voices that sneak in to disrupt the peace of so many of us. And when you’re on the ropes, fighting off that match-ending TKO, they’ll mop your brow and push you back out into the ring, saying, “Just think differently, you can be anything you speak into reality.”
I learned somewhere along the way that dreams only come to you through immense sacrifice, that new life must be found through penance and pain. No one showed me that new realities can be found in the light glistening off green leaves swaying in the breeze or a crisp and swiftly flowing stream.
They told me all these things about myself, and I trusted them because it wasn’t their versions of Sandra that were staring into my eyes, telling me I’d be more likable if I were less honest and more compassionate; it was the face of someone I knew, someone I loved who told me that if I placated a feeling rather than served the truth, maybe then I would be worthy of love.
The last time Sandra attacked me with her self-deprecating energy, I stood firm in her attack. I didn’t raise my shield or wield my sword as I usually would to fight off her newest round of character assassination. Instead, I let her scream and hurl her insults at me. Pouring all this rage that fuels her cruelty over me like hot lava, melting away my clothes and skin and bones until there was nothing left but the subtle shimmer of my soul; a refractory light of purple and pink and the lightest of blues. I took everything she had to give until she was so small I could wrap my light around her and run ribbons of color over her quivering body, soothing the pressure of her existence.
Sandra, this beautiful and hateful force, was born from a need to survive. A defense I created when I was tiny and felt unseen and forgotten. Someone to remind me I couldn’t afford to take my foot off the accelerator or I would cease to exist.
Sandra made sure I survived, but she had no idea what it meant to live, and I had been deferring to her for longer than I care to admit. Her cruel and bitter defense of a life I never really wanted drove her hate for every tiny ray of light that escaped her swirling dark cloud of uncertainty, and the more I broke through, the harder she fought to keep me contained. I found Sandra’s ruminations reflected in the voices of people I loved; practicality and logic and “you have to be realistic” echoed around every corner. They were scared. Scared for me, scared for themselves. It’s not a lack of belief or desire that fuels a freeze and kills a dream; it’s fear, and I think our ability to project those onto the people around us is a universal human experience.
Soothing control of my reality from Sandra and then releasing that control to the Universe flooded my being with anxious energy. I did not know how to exist in a moment without action. Present in nothing but the breath filling my lungs and the blood flowing through my veins, but that is what the Universe demanded of me.
Pause. Settle. Feel.
I was surprised to find that the energy pulsing through me was not the fearful, failure-laced zaps that would shock my system when Sandra was ripping my consciousness to ribbons, but rather a light-building whisper of hope and desire and a knowing of living that I struggle to articulate in a way that makes much sense to those who don’t yet know a version of themselves who exists without apology or regret.
You know the feeling you get the night before a vacation you’ve been joyously anticipating for months? Where you’re packing your suitcase and checking items off your packing list, and you know that for the next 7 days, you’re free? The world you exist in every day, the one that sometimes feels like the ever-looping Groundhog Day, will fade from reality? By simply walking through the sliding glass doors of your local airport and taking a deep, cleansing breath of the invigorating airport air, you are changing your entire reality?
That is the feeling of choosing to live. New people, new places, new experiences. Suddenly, the dreams you’ve kept tucked away underneath your bed in the Vans shoebox you’ve had since 1998 with the disposable camera photos from a time when you weren’t so concerned with surviving are at the forefront of your mind again, and they don’t feel out of reach or silly. They’re all you can think about and everything you long for. The faces you encounter will all be new, and any one of those souls could become the next connection to an undiscovered path.
It’s possibility instead of certainty.
It’s not Sandra’s preferred way of surviving, but she’s learning to get comfortable with unearned joy and fanciful musings. She’s learning to think differently, so I can speak us both into a new reality filled with vacation energy and dreams only I can see. She still has her fearful moments of lack and lies, and the broader reality of the world we live in only highlights how uncomfortable with no control she truly is, but her anger is no longer directed at me, and she’s decided she looks pretty great wrapped in my radiant colors with a smattering of sun flecked freckles.
Ok, love you, bye.
