Censorship

   I'm about to get really real, here. I am much more comfortable writing things down than I am actually speaking to people. I'm a good Midwestern girl and we were raised to believe conflict is bad and no one should ever be mad at us. My best friend and I have never fought. We've known when the other person is mad at us, but we have never sat down and had a real fight. There was one time when she said something that hit a nerve and I knew it was more my issue than anything that she had done and I got off the phone abruptly. I've done the same with many of my friends/coworkers. I would rather sit and stew and talk myself down than confront someone over what they said or did that made me angry or hurt. Then, I generally push down those feelings, let things simmer, and then, when someone says something that should not bother me too much, I'll either explode or become incredibly passive aggressive. It's not really a great way to be a friend. I'm working on it. 

  The older I get, the less I care about what people think about me. I used to process anything I took as criticism as a personal attack. I'm learning, as a twenty eight year old, that we all have filters. How many times have I said something to a person and then had to explain what I said and how I meant it because they had taken it another way? I do the same in reverse! Someone can say to me, "Have a nice day," and if I choose, I can hear that as a sarcastic comment or a sincere well-wishing. But, I need to work on handling what I believe is someone censoring my behavior. My reaction is generally like this: It's MY behavior. Just relax. If you don't like it, then don't do it. You don't have to tell me not to. There's stuff that you do that I don't enjoy, but I just roll my eyes internally and move on (unless you're my mom, then I make a comment because I love getting your goat). 

  I love to tell stories and I love being the center of attention. I have also never cared about class and professional boundaries. I'm me. I act the way that I act whether you're my CEO or my custodian. I want people to see me as a person first. I don't ever want to be promoted because I wore the right clothes or attended the right events or kissed the right butt. I want to be promoted because I work hard and I deserve it. I went to an outing once with some coworkers and higher ups in the company as a way to cope with a horrible project. Yes, it was a work outing, but it was not on work-time. Everyone had a couple of drinks and we were telling war stories and I started telling mine like I would if I was around anyone. Loud, with accents, a little off color, and one involved saying the word "underwear". One of my coworkers, I felt, was giving me looks of censure and making comments about being afraid of where my stories would go. And it bothered me so much because I felt that she didn't realize that I was reading the people I was talking to. I was looking at their reactions and their faces and seeing whether they thought I had gone too far. That's my survival instinct. That's my strength. I know when people want me to continue or to shut up. And I was killing it!

   I once had a phone call with a company and I took it in front of a couple of my friends. I was telling the woman on the phone that I had two different banks: because I was living in Arizona and I kept my Iowa bank and then opened a national bank account as well. I made a joke to the phone agent that having two bank accounts made me sound like a drug dealer and my friends were horrified. The phone agent thought it was hilarious! She and I giggled and then I completed my call and everything was fine. Again, I could tell she was someone that could take the joke. She didn't automatically write me up and call the FBI or IRS to investigate whether I was laundering money. And, if she had, they weren't going to find anything. Just like when I opt not to take my credit card receipt at a restaurant or gas station and I tell the attendant, "You can steal my information, but you won't get very far." That way they know, girl's got money issues, steal someone else's identity. I'm not saying anything because I'm a criminal, I'm being a real human having a real human conversation. 

   I also get very obsessive about different things: books, tv shows, movies, actors. I had one friend tell me that she was tired of hearing about my current boy crush. Well, that's okay, I get sick of hearing about stuff you talk about, too, but I just let you go on because, if you're talking about it, you must need to. My obsessions last for a couple of months and then they go away. Just ride it out. That's what I do. When you tell me that you're tired of hearing about what I'm interested in, then, to me, that often tells me that you're not interested in me. I don't talk about my job-the work I do-I'll tell stories about the people I work with. I talk about what I'm obsessed with at the moment. Or articles I've read. Or what my counselors told me I need to work on. Those are all aspects of me. My mom and best friend both tell me a lot of stories about their work and what's involved, and I listen (or, if I'm having a bad day, I'll at least pretend to listen) because they want me to be involved in their lives and, a lot of the time, they're talking it through in order to process it. My obsessions are the way I process the world. I don't drink a lot and act out in an alcohol-induced haze. I don't use drugs. Those are things to censor. Instead, I make jokes and tell stories and talk about things because that's how I process the world.  

   I get so irritated when other people act like I'm doing something wrong. Just because you wouldn't say it doesn't mean it's not okay for me to say. As long as I'm not screaming racial epithets, threatening to harm/kill anyone, or bullying anyone, what I have to say is fine. Why do I have to conform to your standards of communication? Why do I have to tamp down my personality because you wouldn't say what I do? This is who I am. I'm recognizing, however, that there are two things that can change here. Either everyone in the world can stop trying to control or contain my behavior or I can just stop letting instances like these bother me. I'm not a complete fool, I know that, especially in our social media society, people are always going to have something to say about the way that I speak or act. Because, in the same way that I feel so strongly about how it's okay for me to be me, they feel that the way they are is the way everyone should be. I need to look at me and ask why it bothers me so much that someone else doesn't like what I do or say. If I don't have a problem with it, that's all that matters. I can't point fingers outside of me and say, "You don't like when I talk about my obsessions and that's all your fault!" I have to look at me and say, "What about that bothers me and is that something that I can bring up calmly and explain my feelings? Or is it something that doesn't even need to be said because it's my issue?" 

  So, I guess, in the end, this blog post is a request to anyone who gets sick of listening to my obsessions: hearing about my celebrity boyfriends, my baby bear, my favorite tv shows-will you please bear with me? Because, when you tell me that hearing about my obsessions doesn't matter to you, I feel like, since they are so intertwined with me, that you are telling me that I don't matter to you. I also make a promise to become a better listener and to try to support you in your obsessions. And, if ever I make a comment or tell a story or act a fool in your presence, can you just say, "That's Meleah," and know that any consequences that may come from my actions, I will deal with? I'm just me. I don't know how to be any different.  

   

Dichotomy

                 I grew up knowing that there was something intrinsically wrong with me. I felt weird. I was awkward. I didn't quite click with people my own age. I was a liberal in rural Iowa. A feminist in a place where getting married before you’re thirty is still a goal. A sore thumb on a hand full of fingers that all worked in tandem while I clumsily tried to catch up.  I never felt a part of my school class. From kindergarten through senior year, I was always outside the circle. If the tiers of social involvement were actually ripples in a pond, I was the fly on the other side of the pond who  finally received information from the biggest ripple. Some of that was self-imposed. I spent high school fairly oblivious to my surroundings. I was angry for the first two years: my parents were newly divorced, I felt like my step-family had been forced on me, and I didn't feel like there was any place for me at home or at school. No place where I could be and being me was enough.  The other reason I was so disconnected was because I spent high school primarily taking classes with the kids who graduated a year before me. I hated school and I viewed it as a job. From kindergarten I knew that I wasn't cool, I wasn't pretty, I wasn't the one everyone wanted to take care of, and I wasn't funny in a way that my classmates understood. But, I was smart. That was made apparent to me and I clung to that with my whole heart. Maybe I didn't understand how these people worked and maybe I didn't have lots of friends, but I was smart and that was my role.

                I always had friends. I should make that clear. I was never bullied-though whether it was because no one tried or because I was just oblivious, I don’t know. It’s not like my classmates treated me like a pariah. I just didn't quite fit. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was The Smart One.  I read really fast, the teachers always put me in charge when they left the room, and I thought school was beneath me.  I made sure everyone knew it, too. Maybe that’s what started what I refer to as the years that were meant to “Fix Meleah”.  I remember lectures about how people don’t like someone who never smiles. They don’t like someone who tells everyone that they’re smarter than they are. They don’t like someone who is opinionated. I should have more than just one friend (which I did!). I should care more about how I looked: this one was really about telling me to lose weight and stop cutting my hair like a boy. It all reinforced to me that there was something wrong with me. It didn't matter if I was smart if people didn't like me. It didn’t matter if I was smart if I wasn't pretty. It didn't matter unless I fit the mold. And I still don’t.

                My junior and senior years of high school, I let go of a lot of my anger. I assimilated. My senior year of high school, I just wanted to have fun. It was the first time I had study halls-ever-and I had class for only three periods during the day. I became this zany, loud, outgoing senior who became buddies with all the freshmen. I got kicked out of one study hall for being too unruly. I started partying with my classmates and drinking like I saw on TV. I had a humor column in the school newspaper and I wrote the dumbest things. I wanted to leave a legacy. I didn't want everyone to remember Angry Meleah Who Thinks She’s Smarter than Everyone. I wanted them to remember Fun Meleah Who Makes People Laugh. The dichotomy of my first half and second half of my high school career is represented in my senior yearbook. I was voted Most Likely to Succeed and Class Clown. I tried to get my government teacher fired, but I also wanted to do something worthy of being sent to the office. Neither worked. It was an odd duality that I walked.

                My friend and I were comparing high school experiences: she had graduated from a Dubuque high school with 350 classmates and I graduated one of 49. I was class president, National Honor Society president, and editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. My friend exclaimed, “I’ve never been friends with someone who was popular!” But, I wasn't. I just existed. I ran unopposed for class offices all four years of high school because, frankly, who else was going to do it? That was my role. I was class president even though my decision making skills were shaky at best. I was editor-in-chief because I’d been in the class the longest. I think the NHS advisor may have skewed the vote in my favor because I voted for the other candidate. Popular people were voted homecoming king and queen. I wasn't popular. But my role was to be the smart one. The leader. So that’s what I did.

                My counselor in college said to me, “You don’t seem to know how you feel about your hometown.” That is completely true. My dichotomy still exists. I really enjoyed parts of where I grew up. I hated others. I’m so thankful that I grew up there and had the freedom to just be a kid and roam outside and revel in the knowledge that I was safe. I just don’t want to go back. I don’t fit there at all anymore. I don’t have a connection there anymore.  I've come full circle. I’m once again outside of the ripples in the pond. It’s cliché, but that chapter of my book of life has closed. That doesn't mean that I don’t cherish it. I’m just not that Meleah anymore.

                When I went to college, I found people who got me. I found people who had read the books I had read, understood the concepts I threw out, and who hadn't known me from Kindergarten. I went from having 48 people who were possible friends to thousands. I spent my first two years of college trying to replicate what had worked my senior year: drinking and being zany. But, the more I met other people who seemed to enjoy me for me, the more I realized that I’m a really good friend, the more I realized that I’m a weirdo and that actually works for me, the less I felt the need to put on that exterior and the more I could just be me. I no longer had to have two personalities. I don’t know if I would have been friends with the same people had we gone to a larger high school. I doubt it. I don’t know if I would have had the same role in school had I gone to a larger high school. Probably not. What I know for sure is that the people I surround myself with now are the ones I've chosen from a large group of people and I don’t feel intrinsically wrong anymore. I feel happy. I feel loved. I belong.