My Shorter Story
Hi, I'm Melinda Harper, a personal coach and founder of BiB.
I've always known there was something different about me, just not what it was. I have always wanted to be a normal girl/woman but couldn't. Just unremarkable, nothing, and distanced. I was clear on what I wanted and was lacking, but couldn't cultivate or conjure it. I couldn't pinpoint why I was different - just that I was.
When I was younger, wanting to stop being excluded, dismissed, and ignored, I would pretend who I was to try to break 'in' to where I wanted to be. I think what I did was create an interface; a version of me that I thought would work. Unintentionally, I went too far, and over time, essentially became this false person and life was her not me.
My life was messy then in a childish way and only grew worse. For forty years there was too much pain, emptiness, confusion, and disappointment. But when I could see my daughters wanting to become different and failing at it, I saw why. I could see the flaws in their thinking and the fault in mine. I realised what had happened to me could easily happen to them, and that unintentionally they were bringing it about.
My life didn't work in this staged persona because the person in it was never real. Fixing your existing life, behaviour, or taking on new identities won't solve a thing. You have to return to who you are and fix with her.
The Longer Version
From childhood I knew I stood apart and struggled to cope with it. I searched constantly and desperately to make it, and me, make sense. I was very much to the side looking in to the world but couldn't break through.
Early on, I had trouble being with people and socially 'mixing'. Even as a child, I can remember, it was hard knowing what to say and how to play with others. I knew that I did not want to be alone, or isolated from people; I just didn't know how to interact with others or how to have a friend.
Anything I could muster to add to a conversation was too short and always boring. So, I used a strategy of asking lots of questions to avoid talking about myself. I would feign interest or having no knowledge of a subject, and be explained the most simple things.
I could not translate who I was into an outward personality. So, I remained on the fringes, outside of everyone, wishing secretly all the while to find my place among them, to fit in, to have friends, and be liked by all the rest.
I understood that my problem with being socially 'normal' was a learning issue. I did not know how to relate to others. I did not know how to express me, and be noticed. Even though that was exactly what I hoped for, I was very quiet and hoped not to draw attention.
I knew, that you had to be part of the crowd, you had to be 'in' to have the life you wanted to make for yourself. And I knew, deep down beneath it all, I was that girl. I could be her and uphold her, if only I could learn how to be her around other people.
So, fast-forward to Secondary School. Being different plagued me, but - I had many distractions. All things bad opened up to me, and I loved them.
I know I'll like something before I even try it, and I don't know instinctively when to stop or when I'm about to get into trouble or be hurt. I have always been a girl that could go either way, with anything.
I just thought I had an addictive personality. As the teenage years progressed, so did the adventure. Surely this was a personal adventure, something I could enjoy free from anyone else. But no, I didn't realise peers had expectations of each other.
So the isolation increased, and I still felt locked from who and where I should be. I wanted very much to to be an 'in' girl. Not a 'good girl' but rather to fit in - just the same as most girls. But I was too awkward, fumbly, and clueless to get there and be who I really was.
So, I styled myself after them, copied what they did, how they spoke, acted, and what they were into. I talked and tried to do the girl stuff I didn't like to do. It wasn't me. It didn't work well. And, while I maintained a sort of quasi place of my own within certain social groups, I was never a strong individual or anyone's 'go-to' girl.
I tried over and over to embody me. I tried to be who I actually was - not some vacuous lukewarm simpleton, but couldn't. So, I pretended. I continued the charade, followed her tide, and gave the world a person they could accept, this walking whisper of a person.
It felt like the biggest fraud and worst exchange. To turn off to be someone inferior. I was a walking ghost of myself. Submitting to this social exercise felt like a betrayal to my most sincere need, to simply be the person I knew I was and to express that me I wanted so desperately to share with the world.
I felt empty. I searched for anything that would open a door for me. I tried to insert myself into career schemes, lifestyle choices, anything at all that might help me discover the key to unlocking who I was and allow myself to step inside and assume her as the persona I presented to the world.
I was consumed by confusion and pain and the void. Why was I so barricaded? Couldn't I see who I was or what I wanted? I wondered why I had no interest and lacked drive and direction. I knew I was this person inside who could not come out, and I just could not find the way in. Trying to become me became a battle of self preservation.
I felt sad and lost all of the time. I did not know why things were harder or different for me. I had no one to turn to, no true friends. The me that they all knew was a fake, a fraud, a role I put on. I was going round and round trying to find me something to do, to give me someone to be.
I turned to what I shouldn't to get away from who I was being and the reality of it. For some sense of pleasure and reward in the moment, a break from the apathy, but they were damaging in themselves.
I sought professional help, off and on. The problem with therapy was it focused on the one problem I was going through. If I went in for drinking, then it was all about the drinking. Of course, I knew that everything was connected. This was never never just one issue, this was a multitude of things.
I could not get it across to them, and they could not seem to get it. I was given the typical professional courtesy of educated guesses dressed up as facts. These were not solutions. They were short and unhelpful, or at best only addressed part of the problem. I wasted years either conforming and following a diagnosis or pursuing another, all to give me answers about myself.
Medical 'authority' is veiled in bravado. In twenty years no one ever said to me they didn't know what was wrong, yet I never got understanding or a grasp of myself or made true gains in any of the help, treatment, or programs. I was simply going round and round, and so - I lost faith in the process.
I saw a total lack of accountability in the system, professional instinct to save face, and the business model within it. I felt hopeless but I was educated. In many ways I struggled, but I could function. I wasn't a total mess. But I wan't okay. In that grey area, you have to diagnose yourself.
Realising, for all the trying I was not getting closer to what I wanted, me, amazed that I had survived a drunken decade, it struck me that diagnoses is a tool to absolve one of expectation. Can explain or discharge you. It is not a cure or a solution. Rather than giving a solution, it labels us for what we are not. In some ways it suggests the life you can expect.
Labels are too easy and limiting. Couldn't I just be a 'troubled, complex woman, with an uneven mind, who is awkward around people, easily addicted to things, and blocked.' This was the case, after all. Knowing this, I could make decisions for myself, surely.
But to follow labels like AA and depression, OCD, or ADD, one finds it difficult to live a life free of the expectation of the limits these labels impose. I have seen it in so many people's lives. They give themselves away to a diagnosis and would never consider acting against the 'doctrine' of their diagnosis.
So, okay, I was a mess, with a 'personality' and fragments of something I didn't know, still trying to break-in and become me. I had parts to my life that were right - but most weren't. I could always become unstable and erratic but in my mid-twenties I really devolved into chaos.
At the height of when 'I wasn't who I was,' I met a man. He was the man I wanted. He was the man the me-inside really wanted. This was the first and only man I wanted (and I have had many relationships). One drunken night, I undid it all, and he left. That was very hard.
He was the one thing that connected me to her, to the person within me, the real me. He was the piece of the big world puzzle that fit into my true self. I knew she was real. All along pretending, accepting, being outwardly the person I had created for the world, I knew she was still very real and very alive within me. He was like the conduit and lifeline to her, to me. He was my real-life proof that she existed. And he was gone.
So I drank and drank and got pregnant and married, all the while wishing for ten years I could take that night back. I tried to find form in my life and had so much love and hope for the first baby that came. Two more followed, and the five of us struggled individually and as a family. It was no home for children, so we left.
Being a mother and raising children fills your heart, and occupies your time, but it doesn't turn your feelings off. I remained unhappy, withheld from myself and my life, desperate to find and become her.
When my daughters were about eight years old I saw that they were starting to pretend who they were around other girls. I saw that they were nasty and dark on themselves. It was more than usual, and I knew girls were self-conscious and critical. I couldn't find help that categorised it, everything assumed they had other boxes or parts to distract themselves with.
My girls didn't. It was self-rebuke all the way. And then I saw what was happening, what happened to me, and the path ahead for them. They were at risk of turning themselves off, as I had done so many years ago.
If you step out on yourself, your soul doesn't let you just return, that's a fallacy. You have within you a seething child who is dark on you for all the life you stole from her, for you are her physical body to exist in. She's been on hold while you pretended to be someone else.
That was the part of me I heard but never clung to or concentrated on. I knew I was smart and capable but could never use or enact my potential. Now, seeing it in my own girls, I figured it out. I never stood behind who I was. I thought being someone else in the world would have more success. Who I truly was - was dormant, fighting to exist, but in the ultimate absurdity - as I was trying to become her, I never focused on or tried to find her.
I could see where my girls were headed. It isn't easy to save young girls from themselves. My only choice was to do it through example. I realised I had no person to be and wouldn't access and benefit from the potential I knew I had until I I developed her.
What I (and the medical authority) were misreading as inability and disease, was actually under-development and a lack of practice and person. I had ground to make up and deficits for sure.
There are clear problems and deficiencies with me, but I also have potential and capability and can work things out for myself. I just had to learn my unique way of working, the method and procedure. The ordinary way of doing things doesn't work for me, nor my children.
I returned to who I was, apologised, made amends, defined who I was, what I had, and what I wanted and then, I plotted who and what I needed to be to get what I wanted. I took stock of what I could do, found ways to learn and gain what I needed, and I built myself into the woman I was screaming to be.
That's the point of all this, not one speck was found in therapy, a diagnosed 'condition', the outside world, or 'self-help.'
It was all within me. It just needed to be unlocked, the pieces laid out on the table and re-stacked, one by one.
Building yourself up into who and what you want is how I now realise you open up and cultivate your life. If you doubt you can, draw or hold back you will lose time and opportunity.
Ultimately, I kept returning to the dichotomy between who I was and who I was being, realised the missing piece was me, and trusted I could reverse it. I 'became' me late, but had waited that entire time to enter my life. In being able to do that I have nothing to prove, 'work' as I expected, and believe in how I guide my children.
Early on, I had trouble being with people and socially 'mixing'. Even as a child, I can remember, it was hard knowing what to say and how to play with others. I knew that I did not want to be alone, or isolated from people; I just didn't know how to interact with others or how to have a friend.
Anything I could muster to add to a conversation was too short and always boring. So, I used a strategy of asking lots of questions to avoid talking about myself. I would feign interest or having no knowledge of a subject, and be explained the most simple things.
I could not translate who I was into an outward personality. So, I remained on the fringes, outside of everyone, wishing secretly all the while to find my place among them, to fit in, to have friends, and be liked by all the rest.
I understood that my problem with being socially 'normal' was a learning issue. I did not know how to relate to others. I did not know how to express me, and be noticed. Even though that was exactly what I hoped for, I was very quiet and hoped not to draw attention.
I knew, that you had to be part of the crowd, you had to be 'in' to have the life you wanted to make for yourself. And I knew, deep down beneath it all, I was that girl. I could be her and uphold her, if only I could learn how to be her around other people.
So, fast-forward to Secondary School. Being different plagued me, but - I had many distractions. All things bad opened up to me, and I loved them.
I know I'll like something before I even try it, and I don't know instinctively when to stop or when I'm about to get into trouble or be hurt. I have always been a girl that could go either way, with anything.
I just thought I had an addictive personality. As the teenage years progressed, so did the adventure. Surely this was a personal adventure, something I could enjoy free from anyone else. But no, I didn't realise peers had expectations of each other.
So the isolation increased, and I still felt locked from who and where I should be. I wanted very much to to be an 'in' girl. Not a 'good girl' but rather to fit in - just the same as most girls. But I was too awkward, fumbly, and clueless to get there and be who I really was.
So, I styled myself after them, copied what they did, how they spoke, acted, and what they were into. I talked and tried to do the girl stuff I didn't like to do. It wasn't me. It didn't work well. And, while I maintained a sort of quasi place of my own within certain social groups, I was never a strong individual or anyone's 'go-to' girl.
I tried over and over to embody me. I tried to be who I actually was - not some vacuous lukewarm simpleton, but couldn't. So, I pretended. I continued the charade, followed her tide, and gave the world a person they could accept, this walking whisper of a person.
It felt like the biggest fraud and worst exchange. To turn off to be someone inferior. I was a walking ghost of myself. Submitting to this social exercise felt like a betrayal to my most sincere need, to simply be the person I knew I was and to express that me I wanted so desperately to share with the world.
I felt empty. I searched for anything that would open a door for me. I tried to insert myself into career schemes, lifestyle choices, anything at all that might help me discover the key to unlocking who I was and allow myself to step inside and assume her as the persona I presented to the world.
I was consumed by confusion and pain and the void. Why was I so barricaded? Couldn't I see who I was or what I wanted? I wondered why I had no interest and lacked drive and direction. I knew I was this person inside who could not come out, and I just could not find the way in. Trying to become me became a battle of self preservation.
I felt sad and lost all of the time. I did not know why things were harder or different for me. I had no one to turn to, no true friends. The me that they all knew was a fake, a fraud, a role I put on. I was going round and round trying to find me something to do, to give me someone to be.
I turned to what I shouldn't to get away from who I was being and the reality of it. For some sense of pleasure and reward in the moment, a break from the apathy, but they were damaging in themselves.
I sought professional help, off and on. The problem with therapy was it focused on the one problem I was going through. If I went in for drinking, then it was all about the drinking. Of course, I knew that everything was connected. This was never never just one issue, this was a multitude of things.
I could not get it across to them, and they could not seem to get it. I was given the typical professional courtesy of educated guesses dressed up as facts. These were not solutions. They were short and unhelpful, or at best only addressed part of the problem. I wasted years either conforming and following a diagnosis or pursuing another, all to give me answers about myself.
Medical 'authority' is veiled in bravado. In twenty years no one ever said to me they didn't know what was wrong, yet I never got understanding or a grasp of myself or made true gains in any of the help, treatment, or programs. I was simply going round and round, and so - I lost faith in the process.
I saw a total lack of accountability in the system, professional instinct to save face, and the business model within it. I felt hopeless but I was educated. In many ways I struggled, but I could function. I wasn't a total mess. But I wan't okay. In that grey area, you have to diagnose yourself.
Realising, for all the trying I was not getting closer to what I wanted, me, amazed that I had survived a drunken decade, it struck me that diagnoses is a tool to absolve one of expectation. Can explain or discharge you. It is not a cure or a solution. Rather than giving a solution, it labels us for what we are not. In some ways it suggests the life you can expect.
Labels are too easy and limiting. Couldn't I just be a 'troubled, complex woman, with an uneven mind, who is awkward around people, easily addicted to things, and blocked.' This was the case, after all. Knowing this, I could make decisions for myself, surely.
But to follow labels like AA and depression, OCD, or ADD, one finds it difficult to live a life free of the expectation of the limits these labels impose. I have seen it in so many people's lives. They give themselves away to a diagnosis and would never consider acting against the 'doctrine' of their diagnosis.
So, okay, I was a mess, with a 'personality' and fragments of something I didn't know, still trying to break-in and become me. I had parts to my life that were right - but most weren't. I could always become unstable and erratic but in my mid-twenties I really devolved into chaos.
At the height of when 'I wasn't who I was,' I met a man. He was the man I wanted. He was the man the me-inside really wanted. This was the first and only man I wanted (and I have had many relationships). One drunken night, I undid it all, and he left. That was very hard.
He was the one thing that connected me to her, to the person within me, the real me. He was the piece of the big world puzzle that fit into my true self. I knew she was real. All along pretending, accepting, being outwardly the person I had created for the world, I knew she was still very real and very alive within me. He was like the conduit and lifeline to her, to me. He was my real-life proof that she existed. And he was gone.
So I drank and drank and got pregnant and married, all the while wishing for ten years I could take that night back. I tried to find form in my life and had so much love and hope for the first baby that came. Two more followed, and the five of us struggled individually and as a family. It was no home for children, so we left.
Being a mother and raising children fills your heart, and occupies your time, but it doesn't turn your feelings off. I remained unhappy, withheld from myself and my life, desperate to find and become her.
When my daughters were about eight years old I saw that they were starting to pretend who they were around other girls. I saw that they were nasty and dark on themselves. It was more than usual, and I knew girls were self-conscious and critical. I couldn't find help that categorised it, everything assumed they had other boxes or parts to distract themselves with.
My girls didn't. It was self-rebuke all the way. And then I saw what was happening, what happened to me, and the path ahead for them. They were at risk of turning themselves off, as I had done so many years ago.
If you step out on yourself, your soul doesn't let you just return, that's a fallacy. You have within you a seething child who is dark on you for all the life you stole from her, for you are her physical body to exist in. She's been on hold while you pretended to be someone else.
That was the part of me I heard but never clung to or concentrated on. I knew I was smart and capable but could never use or enact my potential. Now, seeing it in my own girls, I figured it out. I never stood behind who I was. I thought being someone else in the world would have more success. Who I truly was - was dormant, fighting to exist, but in the ultimate absurdity - as I was trying to become her, I never focused on or tried to find her.
I could see where my girls were headed. It isn't easy to save young girls from themselves. My only choice was to do it through example. I realised I had no person to be and wouldn't access and benefit from the potential I knew I had until I I developed her.
What I (and the medical authority) were misreading as inability and disease, was actually under-development and a lack of practice and person. I had ground to make up and deficits for sure.
There are clear problems and deficiencies with me, but I also have potential and capability and can work things out for myself. I just had to learn my unique way of working, the method and procedure. The ordinary way of doing things doesn't work for me, nor my children.
I returned to who I was, apologised, made amends, defined who I was, what I had, and what I wanted and then, I plotted who and what I needed to be to get what I wanted. I took stock of what I could do, found ways to learn and gain what I needed, and I built myself into the woman I was screaming to be.
That's the point of all this, not one speck was found in therapy, a diagnosed 'condition', the outside world, or 'self-help.'
It was all within me. It just needed to be unlocked, the pieces laid out on the table and re-stacked, one by one.
Building yourself up into who and what you want is how I now realise you open up and cultivate your life. If you doubt you can, draw or hold back you will lose time and opportunity.
Ultimately, I kept returning to the dichotomy between who I was and who I was being, realised the missing piece was me, and trusted I could reverse it. I 'became' me late, but had waited that entire time to enter my life. In being able to do that I have nothing to prove, 'work' as I expected, and believe in how I guide my children.