This is taking a lot of courage to write. I've never been one to speak about my personal struggles. I've always walked through life telling myself to be thankful, and that my struggles are relatively insignificant because someone else somewhere has it harder. That no matter how dark it got for me, it was always darker somewhere else, so I should focus on the light. On my strengths. On what I did have. On what I could give and teach. I felt that if I allowed myself to falter, to feel like I was struggling, it would invalidate the struggles of all those who invariably struggle with darker circumstances.
It took me a long time to see that avoiding the darkness within myself can only empower its ability to obscure my light.
Self-acceptance is my struggle, and I know many others share in this fight. I'm writing this in hopes that the words I pen can bring some light to those who avoid their own darkness.
For those of you who don't know, I was ran over by a truck when I was four years old. I was drug about seventy-five feet after impact. A large section of my scalp was shredded off by the pavement. My left ear was left hanging from threads of skin. I endured painful reconstructive surgery at a young age, and the trauma still lives within myself and my family.
Nearly twenty years later, I find myself reflecting on how it has affected me.
Growing up in the public school system was not easy. I was continuously defined by my physical abnormality. I rarely went a day without having to explain my story and my scars, constantly reinforcing the trauma I had to live with. I was a precocious and mischievous child, and ultimately a target for all those children who needed someone to take out their own struggles on. For a good portion of my childhood, I was known as "Baldy". I struggled incredibly hard to escape the victim mentalities that inevitably found their way into my perspectives.
Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was always haunted by the whys and what ifs. I still am. What if I never got hit? What if I had the long golden locks that my genetics called for, rather than the jigsaw puzzle scalp I ended up with? What romances and experiences did I miss out on? I expended so much mental energy on simply staying sane, so what would've happened if I could've focused more on school and gotten recognized for my intelligence and gifts?
I can ask the universe why for days.
Even now, I struggle immensely. People like to act like appearance doesn't matter but that's bullshit. My insecurities are real, and they are not easy to live with. When I look for a job, the ability to wear a hat is a deciding factor. I watch my hair fall out of my reconstructed scalp and wonder how things might've been different. I still worry about how this will affect me down the road. I've turned a hat into a hairstyle, and now my insecurities are drawn out in the tanlines circling my scalp.
My whole life has been a struggle to define myself in ways that mask my trauma and struggles. I don't want people to share in my darkness. I only want them to see their own light. The light I see within them. I'm sharing my darkness in hopes that it can put people's light into focus. And also, to put my own light into focus.
Although the darkness still lives within me, what I've learned from my struggles is how to love. It's easy to extend compassion to those less fortunate, but what about those more fortunate? What does that compassion look like?
It took a long time to not hate everyone around me for what I perceived as my own handicapped existence. It took a long time to not act aggressively towards all those who didn't understand or share in my struggles. To love those more privileged, who never had comparable struggles, is not easy. But it is possible, and in today's world — necessary.
It took even longer to extend compassion to the universe that traumatized me. Even longer to be thankful for it. I don't know what kind of life I would've lived if I didn't have to struggle so hard, but I can't imagine having the perspectives that I do and the loving friends that I have.
Self-acceptance starts with accepting the people and the universe around you, because you co-emerge with them. Without you being exactly who you are, the grand orchestration that is the universe couldn't be.
And I'm not writing this to garner pity for my struggles, but to show that people really do struggle, and that it's okay to do so. Our struggles are real, and they deserve validation. It's okay to fall apart sometimes. Real people fall apart. Real people cry. Real people struggle.
Embrace your darkness, because that's where you'll find your brightest light.
"No matter how hard I hit the ground, I'll still smile"
