Because I Am Worth It!

This piece was published in Storytime Tapestry and gather.com

Even before the day I was even born, I was rejected. My parents were not married. My mom was willing to give me up for adoption. My father took me home to his mother to raise as her grandchild. I was again rejected when he married another woman and forgot I existed.

All my life I was rejected by one group of people or another. I was always different. Furthermore I was so shy nobody realized I was even there in the room and occupying the same space as they did.

In elementary school I was rejected because I was fat. Very few people wanted to play with the fat girl. Later the same issue arose when I was a teenager facing the prospects of dating.

My own mother always compared me to my sister stating such things as,

"Why you don't do fix your hair like Linda does."

She failed to realize the most crucial truth that I was not Linda. I was me. But who was I? I had no identity. In school I was not Carol, I was the fat girl, and at home I was not as good as Linda. No one cared to find out who I was. No one wanted to get to know me.

Over the years these feelings added to my isolation and my lack of a sense of self. I only started developing a sense of self when I decided to go onto college, a concept relatively unheard of in my ghetto community.

Though my self-esteem was developing it certainly had not matured. I enjoyed learning; the downside was my peers who now took the stance that I felt I was better than them because I had an education again rejected me.

The realization of how my friends felt about me pierced my heart like a sword. Until this day I cannot stand to be misunderstood. But at that point in my life, when I was in my 20's, I had built up enough self-esteem to know I would not play ignorant for anyone just so I could belong. Giving up who I was, after working so hard to find out, was not worth sacrificing to these so called friends. This time it was I, who chose to leave the group on my terms - except me for who I am or don't accept me at all, either way is fine by me.