About Me — Mario (girl)
The pic says some things, not everything though.
The first identity crisis I can remember erupted in response to being asked to provide an About Me slide for a quarterly portfolio review with executive leadership. All I could think of was what I didn’t want about me on that slide:
Bi-racial Gen Xer from 1980s era Detroit.
Tomboy.
Former single mom now loving wife and mother of 4.
Former foster care youth before foster care was a thing.
Boho Hippie (Lisa Bonet-esque) Tech Nerd (didn’t have a role model here but if you’ve ever seen Orphan Black, Cosima seems kindred).
Fitness Fanatic.
Working Mom.
These are all the terms I’d lived and been boxed into thus far, by myself as much as others, out loud and insinuated.
Yet they didn’t taste quite accurate enough. I was bothered by a nagging somewhere in my brain, maybe my soul, almost a thirst, making me sense I was mostly something deeper, underneath these words.
It took me a week to put together that slide and I ultimately caved, settling for the vanilla expected corporately safe format and words not unlike all the others.
But it forced me to think about myself differently, outside of the roles I play, my biography even. Teenage me had already decided I was nobody’s victim, that I had a choice in how much my circumstances got to dictate who I became, people’s assumptions be damned. But now, I struggled to put the sentiment into describing words versus the shorthand nouns Woman, Mom, Wife, Leader. It bothered me to feel that even if I wasn’t any of those things, I’d still be me, and that if I couldn’t say clearly who that was outside of those contexts, did I really know myself?
So who am I most accurately? If I could pretend that all the choices made by others, that resulted in impact to the course or circumstances of my life, hadn’t happened, who would I still be, in essence?
I am…
Wildy, almost destructively curious — it is a guiding force, my momentum, and the abrasiveness in my communication sometimes. Think, like a toddler maybe. Cute, fascinating even, but tiring by 8pm.
Quietly observant, hanging on to every commonality yet wondering the possibilities of differences and path options. Those choose your own adventure books are my spirit animal.
Unbridled ambition, in my mind, spirit and body, I desire, can, and must do ALL the things. Reality is trying to m*****f my soul as the years pass.
Because I am also truly a hippie — peace, love, and pleasure and all that. I will brake all that ambition for anything remotely woo woo, fun, or to rescue loved ones. Today I practiced surfing then took a hip hop class right after like I’m not a 40+ yo trying to hold my bones together and figure out what my next income source is. I’m going to a body building seminar this weekend on behalf of a friend even though there isn’t any part of my thinking about menopause body that is willing to get on stage in a bikini, because she says she needs me.
Finally, I am stoic. Emotions are fleeting, I don’t trust them. In my being, probably my dna, I believe most everything just is. I must’ve always been this way — seeing and accepting, waiting, sensing the grander scheme of things. It’s not an act or learned behavior, though now I read a lot about it and it resonates as “The Way” and thank God! because I don’t know how I would’ve survived all the BS without this disposition. A lot of people don’t like it. My radical acceptance, “control the things you can control” responses never satisfy. I think because people believe the emotional life they‘ve built for themselves is some sort of compass, i.e, the follow your heart adage. And while I know we all are running around impacting each other in barely felt and unseen ways, I also now believe that we spend too much time in lamentation when we can almost always choose to be happier.
One of my first memories as a child is a knowing — that everyone was walking around experiencing the world from behind their own eyes much like I was. And yet because our circumstances were different, I might have different feelings and beliefs about the exact same moment we shared. The thought opened my perspective and heart to understanding we are all the same and different at the same time.
So at my core, without all the tropes I’ve been through and become, that’s me, just out here experiencing like everyone else. Maybe we’ll bump into each other sometime.
