Epidermal Transluscence

I used to be excruciatingly thin-skinned. I found myself spending lots of time alone in my apartment because even the most benign encounters with others were too much to bear. My skin was so thin that I described myself as feeling like I had no skin at all. I was so acutely self-conscious that I had no way of discerning the difference between someone's personal stuff and something hideously lacking or objectionable about me. If someone seemed distracted, it was because I was a hideous unpleasantness they couldn't wait to be rid of. Sad, huh?

Then one day I "got" that it was totally a choice. I got that my thin-skinned habit was a habit of double meaning. It was a habit, as in a pattern; and it was a habit, as in a costume. I was a pro. It was my way of projecting my incredibly low self-esteem. It was a way of proving to myself over and over again how little I mattered to others, how little I was respected, how alone I was. By filling the air around me with tiny sensors, constantly filtering for hints of rejecting or distraction around me, I could validate my worthlessness to my own unending fascination.

The words of Eleanor Roosevelt about no one having the power to make one feel small without one's own consent rang in my ears and I "got" their meaning. I realized that I was the one who placed so little value on me. And since I was broadcasting that on every channel available to me, others picked up on it--mostly subconsciously. For the dedicated, the people who loved me, I employed additional tricks of subterfuge to thwart their attempts to let me know that I was loved and acceptable to them. I was really good at it. I reached a point of nobility in my own mind: I realized that I was just not meant to have the kind of happiness and companionship other people had. My calling was to suffer, to provide karmic balance for someone else's joy.

Holy distortion!

The day that I got how much I was clinging to that whole paradigm, how complicit I was in my own suffering, and that my thin-skinnedness was a choice I felt... enraged. I was pissed. I thought, "Hey! I'm not who fucked me up, how come I have to do all the work to heal me???" I thought, "Oh my God! I've spent 35 years buying a line of crap someone force fed me before I was old enough to know better and they were wrong!!!! I felt overwhelming grief.

I ranted. I railed. I may have even raved.

When that energy ran out (and it was weeks long) I felt... lighter. Relieved. Relaxed in a way I never had in my whole life. I felt a stirring breeze of personal freedom. I giggled and realized a sense of liberation. I got excited. I thought, "Holy cow! Wait a minute! I can totally be the kind of person I've always admired! It's all in me!" I thought, "Wow! Just like that! I don't have to apologize for existing!" I glowed, "Whoa! I get to choose stuff based upon what I like and want!"

That last one was a revelation that resonated to the tips of my toes. Though I've never run short on opinions, I'd barely ever considered my own preferences when making choices. For example, I loathe living in cities, yet I was doing exactly that. It had never occurred to me that I could pick where I lived based upon the kind of place that I'd enjoy. I assumed that anything that I'd really like would be more than I could afford. Of course, I'd never actually checked.

A co-worker and my haird stylist, in the same week, said, "You know, I can't figure out why you live in Cambridge. You are such a North Shore kind of person." My co-worker was more persistent and instructed me to return from the Thanksgiving holiday break with a cupful of sand from Newburyport. I did as told and also provided her with a copy of my signed lease from Gloucester. And my new era of discovering what I like was begun. (And, for the curious, my Gloucester apartment was bigger, on the water, and more than 20% less expensive than my place in Cambridge.)

This Thanksgiving will be five years since that time. I am nearly unrecognizable to myself compared to how I was six years ago. Well, that's an overstatement. It's more accurate to say that after more than a decade of serious internal searching and effort, I find myself quite changed. I am deeply happy. I love my life. I love me! Unearthing issues and stuff to heal feels exciting now. (I never imagined that could be the case.) Sure, I still have the full range of emotions. I mean, I'm a human being and I'm supposed to. The difference is that now they are just feelings and I can have them and experience them and move on.

The point of power is always in the present. Just because one has always been thin-skinned, for example, doesn't mean that one must continue to be so. The change will happen in a single moment. We can choose to have that moment be now. And then choose it again, as needed.


~M

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