No one Else Can Play Your/My Part
This concept haunted me all week. Why can no one else play my part?
No one else can play my part because no one else can be me with all my imperfections and perfections.
That's my pat answer. It's the answer that sums it up and yet it somehow feels incomplete. It has taken me years to get to the point where I believe I am enough. I spent much of my life "trying to be..." in order to be lovable, acceptable, respectable. Yet, as I stand here I remember a time when I didn't care who liked or didn't like me, who stayed and who left, who thought well of me and who thought ill of me. I remember that time, and I remember the crushing blow that changed how I saw myself when I looked in the mirror. I remember spiraling into a place of self-destruction and suicidal thoughts. I remember thinking the world would be better off without me in it. I remember thinking I brought nothing but misery to everyone around me. I remember believing with my whole heart that the only way to spare my family the shame of having me as a daughter was to stop existing. I never thought of it as dying, just as no longer existing.
I rarely think about that time in my life and I talk about it even less. It seems so inconsequential to who I am now yet if I hadn't gone through it, I wouldn't be the person I've grown to become. Recently, when I read about Robin Williams suicide, these thoughts came back. Not because I knew him but because I understood how the outside world can see us as happy when we're spiraling into that abyss. I know how hard it is to find the way out of that abyss. If we're lucky someone sees and someone intervenes.
When I spiraled years ago, a friend noticed and told another friend, Emery, because she thought maybe he could reach me when she had failed. At first, apparently, he dismissed her concerns. Then he saw me on campus and saw something in my demeanor that concerned him. He reached out. He did little things. He elicited a promise from me every day that we would talk the next day. He asked if I was eating, sleeping, and otherwise taking care of myself. He inquired about my plans for the day, the week, the month, the summer, the next Fall. He asked me what happened. I told him. He listened. He didn't judge. He simply reminded me of the good in me even when I refused to believe him. He even managed to coax a laugh or two from me. Most importantly he kept eliciting that promise that we'd talk the next day. He, like most people who know me well, knew that I hate to break a promise. I will go to great lengths to keep the promises I make.
Sometimes the little things are the biggest things when it comes to being there for someone.Somehow, without me even being cognizant it was happening, he reminded me there was only one me and that I had much to offer the world.
Eventually, I began to see that the longer I survived, I... well, survived. It took a long time for me to feel like I could do more than survive. Sometimes, we have to accept that survival is enough until we can move to the next level and eventually to thrive.
Today when I look at those around me, I can generally see a million reasons why no one else could play the parts of the people in my life except the people who play them. I still sometimes have to remind myself that no one else can play my part. That's okay because I know, deep in my heart, that I am uniquely me. I am the only me there will ever be just like each person I meet can only be who they are and no one else can be that person.
So the reason no one else can play my part or your part is simply because we are all enough just as we are and we all have much to offer the world just as we are.
Comments
Post a Comment