Resume

Objective

Introducing ourselves is a daunting notion for those of us who prefer not to be “defined” by what we “do,” where we live, our age, gender, or beliefs. If we apply the same rules of Anti-discrimination law to our bios, the question of how to introduce ourselves becomes a bit more challenging. “Introduce yourself” becomes a command. A directive. A demand. 

When recently faced with this question, I was suddenly overcome with a sense of desperation and anxiety. What do I say?? How do I quantify “WHO” I am?? 

As our resumes suggest, it is our experiences that define us. Separate us. Bind us together. Our experiences shape us. Make us unique. Original. (And ohhh, how we all want so badly to be original!). Yet, to simply tell our story is not the same as capturing the essence of how those experiences have created us as an individual. 

Experiences create memories. Pictures in our minds, strung together with bits of sound and strands of emotion. A scent here, a taste there. A pinch of nostalgia, a dash of pain. Like a camera, we can switch out the lens and change the perspective of the story. 

Personal Information

I have had the “angry victim” lens on for a LONG time. It’s not so much a red color as it is a sickly yellow. The color of festering hurt, oozing from the old, the new, and the untended wounds of the soul. 

But I am also a dreamer who easily throws up a rosy soft lens. Tinted with hues of “what if” and glitter, I happily distort my own reality in favor of a fuzzy warm future of perceived perfection. Where someone is undoubtedly baking cookies close by and the laughter of “not alone” can be heard with windchimes in a delicate breeze. 

I had this star-dusted lens up for a few months this past year. While the world suffered under the strain of a pandemic, I drifted through visions of colors and light and possibility. I traded what WAS. . . for what I hoped could be. I reveled in falsely amplified sensations of belonging and believed myself to be in love. 

That lens shattered. 

The pieces cut my hands as I grasped at them. Desperate. Trying to puzzle a way back to beautiful. Begging to have my dream returned to me. 

But it was gone. 

And I could not go back to ignorance. No matter how hard I tried. 

“You were unsure
which pain is worse –
the shock of what happened
or the ache for what
never will.”

-Simon Van Booy

Experience

Who am I?? The question descended on me like an accusation. Mentally, I fumbled and faltered and stuttered to a halt. A lifetime of personal experiences and I was STILL clinging to the idea that my identity was defined by the worth that others assigned to it. I felt like I was. . . nothing. No one. At least, no one that had any value. Because I could not see worth or value in myself.

The worst of this “nothingness” came from the knowledge that I had spent the better part of the last decade coming undone and then. . . ohhhh. . . soooo. . . slowly. . . rebuilding a steady psychological foundation for myself. How could just a few months. . . after ALL those years. . . strip me so quickly of ALL the gains I had strived for? How could I revert back to the beginning of my undoing like ALL those years and ALL that work had never happened? 

The truth of those years, I realized, was that the time and effort I had exerted. . . had been spent in isolation. Carefully removed from interacting with other people because they felt unsafe. A therapeutic biosphere of my own design. A life support bubble just for me, where I could flourish and grow at my own pace. Safe, yet completely disconnected from reality. All that time, I never reached past the boundaries of my comfort zone. 

Skills

It was a dangerous combination of hubris and hope that led me to step out of my safe space, coaxed by the words of a person I trusted. 

I was hopelessly naïve. A gullible fool. 

Like a child, I willingly and unquestioningly imagined myself to be stepping out of my bubble. . . and into the welcoming honesty of another’s. My own challenges came up again and again during this process and, one by one by one, I tackled them. Oh, how courageous I thought I was! How brave! 

How stupid. 

While I was busy working through my “issues” of vulnerability, I didn’t think to examine the motives of the person I was stirring up my life for. I was still in my bubble. Daftly unconscious to even the suggestion that the bubble of another, which I was blissfully colliding into, might not be the sphere of safety I assumed it was. I trusted without thought. An old friend! A latent love interest! What wasn’t to trust?


Everything. As I would come to find out. 

In a single day, the fantasy of hopes and dreams that I had euphorically stitched together with the thread of misguided belief that I was “special” to another. . . exploded. The blast shook me awake. Shocked me to my core. Dragged me back into reality while simultaneously hurling me back into the darkness of my past. It was all. . . a lie. 

In the aftermath, I disintegrated. Into tears and anger and ash. Into nothingness. 

I had waltzed straight into a hell of my own making. The discrepancies had been there, but I didn’t see them. Because I didn’t WANT to see them. 

A few empty apologies and the devil disappeared as quickly as I had let him into my life, leaving me to burn in the fire of feelings I had assumed were mutual. 

Education

It was a life lesson I should have learned YEARS ago. Not NOW. Not at my age. Not after I had worked SO hard to overcome the pain and loss of identity that marked the last decade. This was supposed to be “my time.” My fresh and healthy new beginning. The culmination of all my progress expressed in the realization of something POSITIVE that fulfilled my deepest desires for connection, intimacy, and the possibility of sharing myself with another. Not THIS. Not the lesson of teenage broken hearts and the crushed delusions of youth. 

Yet, there I was. Standing in the mess of my own ignorance. Completely lost. Undone. Again. 

Awards

In the nothingness I felt, (and yes, still feel – if I’m being honest), the question, “Who am I?” has continued to plague me. How can I even begin to introduce myself when I feel so. . . blank? And in that question, I found my answer. I am blank. Unwritten. Void. 

It is from the void that all potential exists. From nothingness comes life. Creation. 

And so, here I am. Beginning. Again. A blank resume.