Otherness.

Carving a path for myself has always been hard. In truth, I’ve always felt like an outsider. Even long before I had an invisible illness that made me feel as though I lived my life inside of a glass box.

I was acutely aware of my own “otherness” even as a child. I was a puzzle piece that never seemed to fit quite right. I would look at myself in the mirror as I grew up, studying the different angles of myself, hoping to glean more insight into who I was. Practicing conversations I imagined I might have with other people. Letting my mind wander with fantasy and whimsy, and even more dangerous - idealism I dared to hope upon. I learned to settle that quickly, my own personal motto becoming, “taper your expectations.” It is too easy to become disappointed as an idealist. We oftentimes learn this the hard way. 

I had an active imagination and a love for writing and art from a young age, but an awful awkwardness around people. Am I the only one who could never even figure out something so simple as what to do with my hands when I talked to people? 

The words of a girl I used to spend time with when I was 8 still ring in my ears, even to this day, on the last phone call we had: 

“Lacy, when we hang out, things are...different. Really different.” 

It took me time, but I realized a large part of my feeling like an outsider was born from my early struggles with anxiety and depression. As many of us artists, feelers, and creators find ourselves struggling with. I think this can be complicated because we both mourn and delight in the things that set us apart. We push ourselves into art to find our great belonging, as our way to try to connect with a world that inherently tells us that our way is the one that doesn’t quite fit. There is a freedom in stopping to say, “Maybe it’s not me that is wrong. Maybe it’s the world. Maybe the reason I feel so different is because I’ve been told that “right” is only one thing. Maybe I don’t have to be like that after all. Maybe I’m like this because I like it here.”

So as I grew older, I learned to step into this otherness more comfortably. To surround myself with people who could see me, and whom I could see. It is no wonder that I often felt drawn to others on the fringe - outsiders, or those on the border, if you will, with whom we all shared a little of this “otherness”, too. Though I tried and tried when I was younger, I came to see that I couldn’t necessarily change myself to be the free-flowing, easygoing person who always fit in. Resilience borne from hardship is a badge most individuals do not want to wear, but is rather forced upon you. Living in a world of lows and highs and oftentimes struggling to find the right balance of in between is difficult, but I learned that it’s okay to embrace this for what it is and seek out balance I n my own way. To listen to my inner self. To change myself to conform to my conditioned version of “right” that the world taught me - I did learn that this was the harder and, nay, more impossible task. I instead had to find my own place. And realize that was okay, even if it meant occasionally feeling alone in a crowded room. 

There are many things that I have learned about myself in the 27 years I have spent alive. 

I know that in order to carve my happiness, I must be a creator. 

I must strive to be true to myself. 

I must feel that I am serving in what I do. 

I must try harder every day to make my heart soft, even if I did not innately learn this. 

I must be okay with my good days and bad days, and be willing to take the steps I need to to listen to what my body and mind is telling me that I need. 

I must be willing to put in the work to be my best self. It is not just steps to an end: it is a life long journey. 

As I get older, I realize perhaps that this sense of otherness is not just me. Perhaps we all feel it. Perhaps we all feel that we live on an island, where we are, at the start, innately lonely. And perhaps we all simply act on this in a different way. Some might find it easy to leave. Some might be content with staying. Many might find that right amount of in between, effortlessly, even. Some might hover in that in between, ever so unsure of how to end up in the right place, afraid of swimming out too deep, unable to get back if we go too far, unable to leave if we never dare to go far enough. 

For me? The island is both hard and too easy to live on. For creatures who hate loneliness, there is a sort of draw to it, too. Like a siren’s song. Living in our own world is what sets us apart. Things feel right, there. The rest of the world is what seems strange to us, not the other way around. 

The longer we stay there, the more that the walls that once held us in seem comforting. I want to remember what these times are like, too. But I don’t want to be here forever. We want to be validated too, you see. We want to find our belonging. Striking the right balance is learning to find your belonging without giving up your true self.

My otherness is something I stride to bridge the gap on, between being true to myself and finding my best belonging. It also beckons. “Do you know what you are here for?” It asks. I think I’d like to find out. I say that I think because that journey can be painful.

Part of my sense of otherness, yes, has been my own personal experiences with pain and my reaction to them. A large part of it I have also, importantly, learned to identify in the last year as a single word: 

Codependency. 

My journey out of codependency has not been easy. It has been a mine pit that I have tried to gnash and claw myself out of, all while the voices of codependency whisper to me not to change. I grow defensive. I do not want to change what has been comfortable for 27 years. So I regularly struggle daily with the same self doubts that always plagued me, only this time, the scene is simply set differently. It is hard to listen to my self doubt so frequently, and in some ways, be helpless to do a thing about it. My need to tether myself to someone or something in order to find deeper meaning is a painful artifact of my childhood, a wound that was left in me by a parent who loved me, but could not allow their own love to flow freely to me. 

Codependency is a lonely place. It is cold, hollow, endless. Because there exists inside of you a hole so deep, that no one thing can ever fill it. Your heart is insatiable. And it tricks you, the clever thing. It takes the things that bring you joy and it morphs them into things that are no longer enough. They are poisoned in your mind, as your mind tells you to loathe them because they are not enough to fix you. Try as they could, they could never be enough. 

That sounds awful, you think. 

It is. It can be. Because it isn’t reality. No one bring can be everything. No one person can be everything. But only you can tell yourself, that.

Recovery is something I’ve learned is not an end state, but rather a practice. Daily I must remind myself. 

“It is enough.” 

“Treasure your abundance.”

“Stop and appreciate.”

“Only you can truly be in charge of your happiness.”

It is important to differentiate this from settling. You have every ability and the tools to be happy, with codependency. But you have to check yourself. Because you are going to question yourself. Constantly. “Do I have enough?”

And you must remember to pause and tell yourself, “Yes, I do.”

I used to think that happiness was a career. So I graduated with a doctorate at 23. And still, I felt like a failure. Still, I felt unsatisfied. An imposter that didn’t belong, but also should have strived for more, pouring and pouring myself into work I found identity in, all while feeling more and more empty, depleted, and lost. 

I used to think that happiness was a man. I painted many to be what I wanted. A white knight. I faulted them for not living up to my impossible standards. It also made me stay in situations when I shouldn’t have. I knew, mere months after my marriage that it was not right for me. Deep inside: I knew. We were not helping each other become our truest selves. I think we were even hastening ourselves further away from who we should have been. My duty bound me there. It also caused me to fester, to simmer, in my anger. Anger that said more about me than about him, even if his addiction was an exacerbation to my negative emotions. The more I simmered, the more I tried to control. Control is not love. Trust is. An absence of trust became centerpoint to years of unhealthy behavior, with bandages placed over rough points to smooth them over, without exposing the deeper wounds to allow them to heal. It is no wonder that my ex-husband eventually left me. I was the one that threw the door open, of course. He simply shut it behind him. I wasn’t happy, and he wasn’t, either. I hated his addiction, but it also made me angry at myself. Because I continued to let myself remain in a situation that violated my boundaries. And he did not feel like he was in a safe place to heal and re-establish his own boundaries, either. Will he ever find healing and recovery? I certainly hope so. But the narrative of my own life no longer depends on what he comes to be. Now, I am learning to confront my sadness, my anger, and my codependency in the narrative of what it says about me: not, “I am feeling all of this because of another person.” I am not. That is merely a variable. My feelings indicate that I still have much work left to do, in my own heart and mind. 

I am finally living in a narrative that is right for me. When I look into the eyes of the man I truly believe has been made for me, I see two people that compliment the other. We watch each other’s blind spots. Neither of us are people who can be controlled. It is hard, too. We disagree often, and butt heads. He pushes me, and I push him. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I am becoming more and more the person that is my true self, because of him. But. It is important still to note that not even my soulmate can fill the emptiness inside of me. Only I can. From a heart that I fill with the grace to give what I might not have ever had. From one that learns to be softer side by side with its developed fortitude. I must remind myself that I am not left wanting more because someone else failed. I am left wanting more because my codependent brain keeps trying to tell me that nothing can ever be enough. And that is not true. So I learn to hold him a little tighter, to treasure every moment with him, but also to learn to be comfortable in my own space. To remember that being alone isn’t always loneliness. It’s also quiet self reflection, and honoring myself. It has its place. Him needing space is not a rejection of me. It is him respecting his boundaries. It is me respecting his. We are a painting made of different colors, making one thing, but each comprised of our different selves. He helps me to get outside of my head when I get into that codependent, depressive, and negative cycle - and I am learning to get better at letting him. It’s an utterly transforming process. As a slow learner, it’s hard. But I am filled with the comfort of knowing that at last: this is where I’m supposed to be. Learning side by side, with him, who I am, who he is, and who we are.  

“What do you want, Lacy?” I want to be happy, of course, I would answer back. But I also have to be honest with myself. If happiness was staring me in the face, would I even know what it looked like? It is hard to accept that happiness is a transient thing. It is not a fixed state. It is an ebb and flow, a journey that I do not simply work towards, but one that I live daily. I learn a little more each moment at a time. 

I hope that we all dare to continue down the River that is the ebb and flow of happiness, that we have the strength to break our cycles, carve our own path, and that we find the self realization and appreciate within in order to celebrate our otherness. We are not all so different, but rather alike, I think. Other or not, we are boundless, capable, free, unable to be labeled. And we are constantly learning what that means. May we never stop.