In my early 20s I did a thing that I really did not want to do.  I got married to someone that I did not love to keep a strangle hold on things that I thought I could not lose.  These things were pivotal in forming my identity which I thought I needed to protect to survive.  That identity was, the smart one, the one that was sure of herself, the one that had the most wonderful and loving relationship, the one that followed in her parent’s footsteps, the one who was good, the one who did not make mistakes, the perfect one. I met the man I married 2 months after my 18thbirthday.  It was my first weekend at college, and he was and I would imagine still is, a lovely human.  He was kind, funny, smart, cute, and adored me.  I liked him a lot and mostly enjoyed being with him.  We stayed together and after a semester or two, I went along with calling that “like” I felt for him “love”.  By the definition I learned from my parents, friends, 80s movies, and Cosmo Quizzes, what we had fit into the category of love, so I went with it.

This guy checked all the boxes that everyone told me should be checked and I had no idea that I could have any boxes of my own to check.  It did not occur to me to show up in my own life because to do so would have meant making waves in the relationships and systems that I allowed to define who I was.  When you stand in the water sure of the fact that making waves is a very bad idea, eventually you disappear beneath the surface.  Your story unfolds in front of you labeled and told by others and that one story becomes the only way you can live.  It is practically pre-ordained.  Physically I was in my life, but I was an empty shell of Deanne, one who only knew I should be _______ (fill in the blank with whatever attribute you would like me to have), with no access to who I was.  I would compare myself to everyone to determine if I was good or bad, okay or lost, a winner or a loser.  Duality – black or white – was the air I breathed and the terror that I would be perceived to be on the losing side controlled everything about me.