because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

It feels like I've been waiting my whole life for a sense that my being leaves a wake in the ether, a ripple in the universe. I have always watched certain people who seemed more real then others, who carried a seismic force of character, the virility of their atoms leaving a residue on the world around them and a tremble of tectonic plates beneath their footsteps. The groove of a wrinkle declaring its owner's history, ancient cowboy boots worn smooth by chain motor grease, the unapologetic expression of one's self, they all make my heart stutter a bit, drawing myself as if around a fire to glean warmth, only what I hunger for is the essence of realness, of deep and true knowledge, the ability to mould one's reality... in the hopes it will somehow rub off onto my physical presence. Typically I have associated these elements with men far older than me, adding strange kinks to my romantic and professional history, but recently have found people possessed of this sense of weight in knowledge and fearlessness that are close enough to my age that it has completely redefined my sense of reality and how much easier it is to manipulate then I had ever realized, that I am having to unlearn everything I ever knew to be true. 

From a young age I put myself in the category of survivor, of rising above the negative elements of my childhood, but when I came across an article about child psychology and being raised in different circumstances, how it affects us as we mature, I found that I fit an entire description of lacking major survival skills. In the article I found myself, the difficulty expressing needs, a stunted emotional vocabulary, inherent fear of authority, lack of feeling validated in my judgments, all the things I wrestle with every day in my professional life, that wracked at my adolescent spirit in grade school. This article touched a nerve I never knew was raw. My younger sister had experienced a vehemently painful senior year in high school, but being away at college, I had a hard time resonating with her trauma, and it wasn't until almost 5 years later, meeting her in her adult incarnation that we spoke as peers and I could finally grasp what had happened that awful year for her. She too fit the description of this article, and trailblazer that I suspect she has always been, she had become aware of our reality and its circumstances before she had the emotional vocabulary to explain it. She was choking on the truth.

My mother lied. Like Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny, parents lie about what is real. Children believe because they respect authority, and we trust our parents to have our best interests at heart. What if you suddenly woke up and realized your mother was not so different from the mother who sits at the subway threshold with a baby to further elicit your sympathy and guarantee the silver change right of your pocket? Having been raised by con artists, I feel like a child of the court of miracles, having never witnessed capable adults, moral adults, real adults it was a shock to find a bright fierce world, instead of perpetual semi darkness and living at the edge of survival on purpose, because it is easier to elicit pity change. Hearing the infantilizing way in which my mother spoke to my adult sister, and her vague attempts to force me into an emotional stranglehold, I suddenly realized that we had all grown up, so she no longer had purchase on other people's emotions, she couldn't be the single mother raising four children to beg and borrow money for milk and pot, and now desperately attempted to invert our relationship with guilt. No, you did not give everything you had to us. How dare you say that to me. You chose to live a substandard life and are trying to blame your laziness in developing individuality and respect ON us. How dare you call yourself a 'child advocate' and teach child development courses, or talk about the survival skills you gave us when you raised your children to consider it NORMAL to live with a crack addict and convict. Remember how you paid for tickets to Germany for you and my little brother? What do you think that teaches your daughters about how much or how little their bodies are worth? If actions speak louder than words, any values you have ever claimed are null and void the face of your actions, and the supreme selfishness in which you have not only lived your life, but subjected your children to have taught us that you believe in nothing but instant gratification and superficial desires. Like a child of the circus, it's no wonder that I am constantly striving for nuances of what is real, having spent my life in a grand charade, where my young eyes witnessed the adults around me with sagging and cracked faces act out the kind of immature pantomime I was born too old and responsible to ever partake in.

Suddenly I know what my sister saw years ago, and I only regret that she had to swallow the truth, that it writhed inside her, alone and misunderstood for so long.

So I have moved like a ghost through my own life, in a desperate search for gravity. With lovers, friends and work, I have evaporated, cheshire catlike, leaving nothing but an echo of laughter, and no true knowledge of who I am, nothing and no one rooting me to this time and this place. Without a discerning eye, and having developed no clear concept of truth from my childhood, often it has been too easy for people to take what they want from me, without my voice rising convincingly to declare boundaries for itself, so I have been poised for desperate flight for what feels like an eternity. But somewhere in the rush, I have found moments of blinding truth and values that have risen fully formed from the core of my being. The deeper and farther I go in eradicating the blood ties and emotional strangleholds that claw at me, the more I know what I truly believe, what I am derived of, people can SEE me, instead of through me, or project upon me.

I am tired of the pantomime, tired of this mask of sweetness and laughter, even when my insides are aching with anger and bitterness. I want someone to know me. To know the softness under the exoskeleton, the steel under the fear.

Now it begins. For the first time in almost a decade, I unpacked all the boxes. I threw the cardboard away. I claimed the walls, I made a space, and it is mine. Not pieces of other people. I have a family, and while it includes my siblings, it is not one of relatives, but one of my choosing, consisting of people I respect, because to me, love and respect are indivisible. I cannot love what I don't respect. I am finally ready to build an identity, to be something tangible, definable. To be real.

"What is REAL?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day... "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept."

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”