I love my self...

 You will have to excuse the 2 week hiatus. I tried to mess with a routine I have devised for myself, and although I swear blind that I am the spontaneous type and can cope with changes - the proof is in the pudding and I discover that I am more a slave to schedule than I think. So here I am, on a Sunday morning; before I dress, tidy or organise any offspring, I am writing. I will be completely honest with you; finding content is still an issue- I am still in a battle of personal self-censorship.

I don’t know when I began to get up each morning and pick up my metaphorical layer of gauze to soften my persona, but I suspect it was quite young. I knew that I was a ‘little too much’, for my family and my questions were a ‘little too pertinent’ and my natural behaviours just not quite socially acceptable from, perhaps the age of 10. What I wanted to do and say was never quite in step with ‘the group’. That otherness has left a lasting impression; there are still certain ‘normal’ group activities that induce a physical reaction from me (akin to how you are expected to feel if someone drags their nails down a chalk board): clapping un-ironically, marching in crowds, girly group dancing, group singing, and collective compliment giving, to name a few. As a teenager I played some of my disgust of group activities to my advantage; for example I was such a crazy, trancelike lone dancer, I would be stopped in clubs and asked where I’d scored from, and some people labelled me as ‘cool’… I was actually at my limit with group activities and trying to bat off attention and socialness.

My objective observation is that most females tend to enjoy group activities, I know women of my age who have rarely encountered any activity alone. Younger females (or so it seemed) tend to move together in packs: toileting together (yuk), singing together, touching far too fucking much, needing each other’s permission to wear a thing or do a thing. All of these things are very uncomfortable for me, and I have struggled over the years in female company, and have relied on that gauze to make my true features a little less inhospitable.

The self-censorship extends to my core beliefs; finally at the age of 46 I am just becoming happy at expressing my *humanism beyond the safety of those who also hold the same view. As my son at 11 has discovered, freedom of belief is not as ubiquitous as portrayed – he has expressed his atheism to peers, only to be pitied and ridiculed (don’t worry he can hold his own without being disrespectful to other people’s core beliefs). I have laughed ironically, as I was brought up to believe that those of faith are the ones who come across ridicule.  As someone who has lived on both sides I can tell you, humans appear to just simply want others to reinforce their own core beliefs, unfortunately very few are truly capable of embracing diversity.

Self-censorship is very tiring - a few years back now I suffered quite badly with TMJ, if you have suffered you will know the agony attempting to eat an apple or trying to yawn. It was at this point that I was at my most exhausted and mentally unhealthy; years of trying to fit around everyone else (amongst other issues) had depleted me and left me flat. I was searching for treatment for my TMJ and somehow got onto a stress management course, it was through this that the penny dropped and I realised that the gauze I picked up, every morning, without even knowing- just so everyone else wasn’t troubled by me, was actually a millstone. The journey of breaking that millstone began right there, and I know it would seem according to self-help books: you recognise the issue, you treat the issue, the issue is solved; but I am still very much chipping away at that millstone. Perhaps next week, I will reveal the full uncensored version, and not even consider how troubled that will leave you feeling.

*Whilst I happy to describe my core beliefs as humanism, I am no means an expert, nor do I attend humanist events or meeting places.