thanks to Patty:

I discovered a very thick cord of my mental state of mind on a subconscious level. I will try to explain it as best I can.

Essentially, my identity was wrapped up in my mother's constant anguish (never a sadder Job has one met) and I began to try to help her carry that burden, though I doubt it even felt like I was there, it was so big, and I began to view the world as a threat, every single thing a potential disaster, trusting nothing and no one, and hiding.

I hid in books. I hid my personality. I was always a weirdo. I used to like to wear two different earrings until someone in my family made fun of me for that. I shrank myself down to a pixel and then wore the shell of my mother's anguish like a tortoise settles into it's house. It felt like that, a heavy shell, a burdensome clunking thing that I wanted so desperately not to wear but I had no idea how to get out of it once it was on me.

I went through my world oblivious for a long time.

I was a jerk. I threw emotional grenades at my mother and brothers constantly and tried to break down the cheerful love I had. It is probably hard to explain that even though I knew what I was doing was wrong, I couldn't stop doing it. I had this overwhelming urge to constantly test the people around me, forcing them to be reduced to walking on eggshells when I entered the room. I hated that in order to prove that everyone loved me I had to be mean to them and see if they stayed.

I don't want to blame her because it's not her fault that I turned out that way. She didn't know how to stop it either. And she was so young.

Interestingly enough, I didn't develop this at a younger age, because I was always a bit carefree and caught up in my own thoughts and, what people describe about me now: chill. I let things slide, I was always a willing volunteer, I constantly showed my affection and was very happy to be myself in general. The five of us squished in there, sometimes I just can't fathom how we didn't kill each other, all angry about the anguish and pissed that we were poor, it sometimes was very good not to be home at all.

This tortoise shell of anger came after I allowed myself to let my studies at DePaul lapse to the point that I--an honor roll student consistently in the Top 10 or 20 of my high school--I flunked out of college. Part of me was absolutely aware that the two and a half months in which I pretended to go to school I was fucking up, but I was so disheartened by an F on an essay I wrote in English Composition, an essay in which I essentially showed off in the most cocky way I could that I was not just a good writer, but a great writer.

When I look at it now, I can see how ridiculous it is that I wrote that as a first essay for a class. My teacher was harsh in giving me an F, but not unreasonable for doing so. I missed the point of the assignment and I wasn't in Fiction class. But for those nine weeks after, my brain was in shut down mode and I felt stuck in only being able to lie the lie. One of the reasons I'm so honest now is that life smacking bout with dishonesty. If I had just sucked it up and told the truth, I could have not flunked out of school and withdrawn instead, and saved myself the cost of the classes.

I knew I was not very good at being in college, from the very beginning, I was the weirdo that no one got. I didn't even have a personality, I was like a walking zombie. Sometimes it was like we were speaking two different languages and I learned not to open my mouth and that not saying anything was better. So the flunking out was the culmination of having spent the first year of the thing I had been waiting for my entire life to do, that my mom had been waiting for my entire life to have me do, and finding out that it was a huge fucking disappointment.

This was the first time I ever fucked up something big. I had a few things happen that were similar but much less minor in their impact. Everyone else in my family had experienced some horrendous bouts of consequences from bad decisions, except me. I was Little Miss Perfect. I had values. I believed in things. Eventually this would be one of the more noxious behaviors venting out of the tortoise shell. Back then I just was a good girl. It was like my job and I was really good at it. So when I flunked out of school it leveled the emotional playing ground and suddenly I was paranoid and uncertain and they bullied me and the defense I had to use to get by was that tortoise shell. It was like a shield and a sword.

The tortoise shell got stuck at some point in my relationship with him, which I feel terrible about, that he endured such an endless array of my bullshit with such good spirits. As a kid, being gangly and awkward was something I got used to, but suddenly being an "adult," I always felt big and in the way. I gained a lot of weight after high school and felt so uncomfortable in this new body. I was extremely insecure and felt so ugly. Yet he still loved me. Then the abyss happened and created an emotional chasm too wide for me to cross. So we stayed for what we had and I hated myself for the abyss. I sometimes wonder if we met now if we'd be able to even be in a relationship. Probably not. And that is okay with me. I used to really regret that choice but I think it was for the best. I hope he is happier for it, too.

Then I fucked up that relationship to the point of you'd have to be crazy or really love me to ever talk to me again. I had no idea how to do it, and I did it very badly. I was stumbling through the dark trying to find a way out is how I think of it, and when a door opened underneath me, I fell. It was exactly what I needed. I didn't realize I had been looking for it until it happened, but I needed someone to teach me how to relax and be cool as an adult and that's what he was for me. He was someone I both admired and secretly disdained, for his values were not as tidy as mine were and they didn't line up next to mine, but I was so thirsty for what he said that it didn't matter what he did.

Added to that was a crazy plan to visit Europe for three weeks. The day after I moved out, I was on a plane to Rome. I decided to go on a whim; one day six months or so earlier when my friend offered I join her there. The biggest trip I took prior, was to Disneyworld with someone else's family. To go to Europe, I had to get a passport, buy rail tickets, consider what I might do there and relish in the fact that I was going to spend five days in Paris, a place that I always felt some weird affinity for without any sort of good reason. And in Paris, and Europe, really, I saw in the people the image and personality I had been vying for all those years, but unsure about enacting. I saw a refined sophistication that I felt I was too beneath to practice, a style of dress I immediately felt at home with but again, thought I was not good enough to be wearing nice clothes; and the manners, a real honest to goodness conscientiousness for their fellow man.

Basically I learned that I don't have an American sensibility, I don't have a particular fondness for rampant consumerism, widespread consumption of plastic in all its forms; and garbage, I really hate garbage. And of course, it's not that Europeans have it totally perfect and no one ever litters, but they at least try and their trying makes more sense to me. It's been nearly ten years since I went and they had recycling stations on many street corners in Paris with holes that only fits the product being recycled, instead of a giant garbage bin with a wide mouthed lid and some blue recycling logo. But it's not just that they do recycling better, the people actually want to recycle, it's part of their lifestyle, it's part of them being an older country than us and having to resort to clever ways to rid the small space of excessive trash.

And, I purposefully didn't wear sneakers the entire time I was in Europe. I left them at home. I took shoes I hadn't worn before, they got broken in on my trip, they were black dressier shoes for me and I got numerous blisters and felt so much discomfort, but when I got there I realized that no one knew I was American until I opened my mouth. And that made me very proud. That affirmed something in me that began to break up the tortoise shell.

I also decided to go back to school. It became the kind of point that I just couldn't argue anymore without sounding ridiculous. I didn't believe in matriculation. Higher education wasn't for me. I don't need school to do what I want. I can't tell you how many times I said those exact phrases and how glad I am that everyone pestered me so much into going to school which was one of the most valuable, self-validating, life-changing experiences for me. You'd think I'd remember what exactly it was that gave me the permission to say I wanted to go to school more than anything. Maybe it was that place, where I learned so much about speaking your desires and having them come true but first you have to say them. They certainly opened a door under me that I fell in and learned how to conduct myself as a human being in a world of six billion human beings. I lost my obliviousness and was able to create huge cracks in the tortoise shell, but it wasn't enough.

It was him, the love of my lifetime, the burnham, that helped me take off that shell, and loved the shriveled and atrophied parts of me just as much as the personality I purported to own, which I had not finished melding against myself, which later he was able to peel up sometimes and expose me and I picked up the shell when I needed it. I was done wearing it in some areas of my life but it still functioned and I still used it as a defense.

Sometimes I imagine that girl I used to be and it's so painful. I just think about her and feel so bad that I was like that and was so unhappy and made other people around me miserable. Sometimes I think about how I sought out approval, constantly baiting everyone around me. Ugh. I hate that girl. And I'm so glad I'm not her anymore.

This last year has really been the cementing of my self, a full acceptance of who I am and why I am with no reservations, concerns or fears. And it has been a very good year. The tortoise shell is so broken I can barely use it, and rarely do.