Underneath

I used to think I was somehow special, that my trauma made me superior to others. Surely, I thought: no one has suffered the way I have. I would watch girls laugh with their mothers, speak without their voices shaking, move their bodies without twitching, and I would seethe internally.

I am not in poverty. One out of every five people have been molested - also not me. I do not have ailing health, or a bully. I am, in fact, lucky.

So why do I feel this pressure to be more damaged than everyone else?

I read a book once where a girl in a psych ward cuts her hair super short and starves herself to emaciation, and goes to group therapy and laughs at the idea of recovery. A man pulls her aside after the group session, twisting her arm, and says: "You can cut your hair as short as you want, you can not eat for as long as you want, but in the end, it's still you underneath."

I feel the pressure, not only to be more damaged than others, but in a complete contradiction, I also know that I need to overcome my insecurities.

I was talking to my therapist the other day and name dropped a prestigious college on the east coast, where I'm from, and she said: "What's that?" and I was completely taken aback. What did she mean, she'd never heard of it?

I felt foreign, pretentious, but more than that - very east coast-y.

Perhaps, then, it's where we come from - and our own personal biases - that make us who we are, and put a unique pressure on us.

Maybe it's not my fault that some guy twisted my arm and told me to essentially F off.

But maybe it is, and maybe that's my unique pressure - to overcome myself.