Living-Deliberately.com

I hate labels. I really, truly do. Boxes are not places for people and labels box people in. I suppose a concession is needed now and then that labels do serve a purpose….we all like categories for instance, dewey decimal systems, alphabetical order, demographics, nutritional information, and for some, polaroid pictures of the shoe inside box number 359.

But for people, or at least this person, labels feel restrictive. As if, “that’s all you’ll ever be”, or “you’ll never get there because you have this ‘fill in the blank’. ” I tend to focus on moving ahead… “who do I want to be?” rather than, “who am I?”.

I don’t think I’ve ever spent much time on “who am I?” My earliest memories are of wanting to be a mother to 5 children. I knew the answer when asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” After all…who asks a child, “who are you today little girl?” So I wanted to be a mommy to five children. And I wanted to be an artist. And a writer. I wanted to keep house and garden and cook well. I became all that.

I also became some other stuff. It’s nothing any little girl says when she dreams. My therapist, after hearing a short run down of my recent months and what led into them said, “well, you have a lot of denial to work through.” She said it like that. So matter of fact. Then she recommended I read the book my lawyer had first recommend three months earlier. A book containing a label so loathsome to me that I couldn’t even order it. Ordering it would be, at some level, an admission of the truth.

I know denial is a useful tool. Sometimes we use it for protection. Sometimes we use it for comfort. Somtimes it’s a buffer, like a psycological aspirin with a smooth coating for easy swallowing. But it also seems to be a wall. “No entrance beyond this point” in big, bold letters, yes, denying, progress beyond that point. Which means, of course, there is no way to overcome without tearing down that wall first.

Or at least cutting in a door.

So for someone who wants to move ahead, it’s time to look for the saw. I bought the book. I read it. I saw in black and white what I’d tried to deny. I’m not so naive as to think I’m anywhere close to being done. Maybe there’s a window in the wall now. Maybe just an outline where the door will go. Ironically, there was freedom found in admitting to the label. Of climbing into the box so that I could beging to dismantle it from the inside out.

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