#girlunchained

[micahsmusing]

Identity of One Millennial

I am 27 years old and just beginning to unlock my desire to milk life dry of experience and dream chasing. It took years of tangible life experience to figure out that I did not want the future that others had planned for me. I was greater than the glass ceiling projections that had been so coercively placed inches above my head. From a young age I had been a dreamer and doer but years of being told to fit in a mold of idealism left me without confidence, courage, or hope. Yet, through all the pressures of socialization, I always knew that I looked at the world differently than the people around me. My mother was born the middle child in a family of six children. She was raised during the 1950’s and 60’s when women’s domestication was being challenged and rivaled by the realization that we could achieve any dream we cherished in our hearts. I believe this sentiment of freedom unnerved my mother. She drifted backward across decades of hard won battles fought by both men and women to free women from the restrictions placed on them by both the patriarchy and social pressures women forced upon each other. Instead of embracing the challenge of freedom she shrunk back into a comfortable existence. One in which she always had to hold herself back from upstaging her husband by learning both to manipulate his ego and detract from her own natural ability. My father was a victim of the patriarchy as much as my mother was self imprisoned by it. Though he was a large man, strong and fully capable of any task, he was never quite masculine enough, or rich enough, or influential enough to fit the ideals of being a “real man”. He spent his life trying to prove his worth to people who simply didn’t care or to sharks who devoured his efforts and left him with even less confidence than he started with. That left me, their oldest child and only daughter in a lifelong defensive position. For my mother, I was never “pure” enough or modest enough. I was always challenging my father when he would fly into a rage and mistreat my mother and little brother. For my mother, that meant I was not demur enough and this would be a greatly unmarriageable trait in a woman. For my Father, I regretfully realized only much later, it only challenged his masculinity further. I broke their hearts because I didn't understand who they were or where they were coming from. Instead, challenge I became only served as a great source of energy for my father to tame his little shrew and after many explosive interactions I was broken into silence. By the middle of high school I was dragged about by both parents and paraded in the faces of each of their friends as a trophy of etiquette and humility. I had to be a Sunday school teacher, and sing in the worship band. I had to be smart but not so smart that I had my own mind. Little by little my individual identity was stripped away and I became a porcelain doll; painted perfectly but truly hollow inside. I hated the world of humans. To me, no one wanted anything for free. There were rules in the world of people. Rules you had to conform to in order to survive day to day life. As often as I could, I would sneak away and find refuge in nature and in my own imagination. I wasn’t allowed to have my driver's license until I was 18 because my parents wanted me close to home and “safe” from the treacherous world. When I finally learned to drive I would leave home for hours on end. I would drive through the fire-kissed sequoias of the Sierra Nevadas and I would discover every possible access road to my safe havens in the hills. These long drives gave me time to wonder what was wrong with me. I often mulled over the problem that I felt more kindred a connection with the wildness and freedom of the mountains, summer meadow flowers, and free roaming animals than I did with the members of my species. When I attempted to fight for justice I failed. When I sat quietly, I forced my own forfeit. I was the girl on the outside. Girl on the outside could never fit in. She didn’t fit at home, she didn’t fit as a wild thing. She had no one who looked at her without seeing a quantitative pay out. Girl on the outside was hollow and without purpose, identity, or connection. Through all of this confusion, I did the only thing people do. I adapted. I learned the social game I'd been taught and tried my hardest to play by the rules. I squeezed and pinched myself into this prefabricated box of the ideal and I never looked up to see the glass above my head. Even now my self consciousness says that telling this story breaks my look of strength and says I'm good enough to play like the others do. But I learned that showing weakness and being transparent shows much more courage than hiding the dark spots away. I learned this lesson in much the same way that I had learned others. This time, I did something different. Every once in a while, life throws something at you so hard it shakes the foundations of every construct you’ve built around you. Life gave me some powerful blows that knocked me so far off everything I had built that I had to start squeezing and pinching to fit in again. But life gave me something else. It gave me a Professor. This man treated me as an intellectual equal. He challenged my ideas and welcomed my challenging of his. He encouraged me to push through the limitations I had set in my own mind and drove me forward with a hungry curiosity to really understand the world like I never had before. He gave me books that confused me and made me frustrated at the darkness in the world and then showed me that these authors felt the same pressure of idealistic boxes that I did. Instead of asking me to think about the words on the page or regurgitate the information I’d read, he asked me to understand how the author was trying to insight change in the world. Literature and Professor Fritz changed my life. I was no longer girl on the outside. Instead I was a person of valuable thought. I read everything I could get my hands on and the more I read, the more I realized that every one has felt this societal pressure in a multitude of ways. The more I read through eras of history, philosophy, and social change, the more I realized that simply embracing yourself and being courageous enough to tell your story can change the way people look at the world. It can change the way they behave and it can inspire others who’s hearts have been broken by human greed and human pride to break free of their respective chains. It can stir a generation into action and fuel a revolution. I have been practicing this notion of freedom and I have many kindred spirits. The people who frown at our ideas and ridicule our desire to reshape the world are people like my own parents, broken, afraid, demoralized, and locked away in the comfort of their constructed reality, and knowing no better. I don’t hate those people, I pity them. To be locked away, hating everything that challenges your ideals because if one block in their wall is revealed as false, their who facade comes tumbling down. These are the people who blame millennials for changing the status quo. They tell us we are weak and distracted by technology, incapable of human interaction, and clueless about the mechanics of the world. The reality is that together we have build some of the biggest interpersonal networks of knowledge, cultural exchange, information, and human connection in the entire history of the human race. We have banded together to become empathetic and understanding and no longer tolerate corporate creed, racism, sexism, or even extreme nationalism. We have learned that no matter what you look like or where you come from, you are just like me. Struggling people on the outside. Battling their own wastelands of isolation, We, as a generation, have learned how to reach out and support each other from around the globe. THAT is the change we are bringing. We are here to shake up the establishment of social constraint and economic oppression and eradicate the comfort of constructed reality. THAT is why we are so often railed against. Because we no longer accept the glass ceiling. We thrive on innovation and new ideas and we realize that we have to fix ourselves in order to save ourselves rather than tear down whoever we perceive to be our competition in a survival of the fittest. We are truth tellers and we refuse to wear blinders or be canaries in a cage. I am 27 years old and I am just beginning to tap into my talents, my dreams, my gifts, and my humanity. I am telling my story because I will no longer be silenced by the “ideal”. I am no longer a hollow porcelain doll and I have realized that my beauty is the light within my own unique heart. I am girl unchained.