The Eyes Don’t Have It

When you have been gaslighted countless times. No matter what you did, you were wrong. You deserved to be called names. You deserved to be laughed at. You deserved to be undercut, undermined and undervalued. You were allowed to put everything you had into a project only to receive zero support when your big day came to show it. You were allowed to practice for hours on end until the day of your competition arose and everyone had forgotten, they couldn’t drive you to the competition because they were busy going to an Elks meeting. You were nothing really, simply a nuisance.

Later in life, you would ask your friends advice, you would ask your bosses advice, you would ask the barista’s advice, you would ask the store clerk’s advice. You would ask every stranger that you could find who would listen. You would pray to God for God‘s advice, “please tell me what to do Angels!” you would repeat. You would pray constantly for guidance and advice. Oh and that GPS…you could not go anywhere without the GPS. You had been to the same place countless times but you needed the GPS to tell you how to get there. It was somehow comforting.

No one even blinked an eye when you started to uncover it and talk about it. No one blinked an eye when you began to share those things that were your gifts. You began stripping away the need for everyone’s approval. Many things began to happen because you started to do something for yourself that was based on your own abilities and your own persistence. You began to change and grow. Your self-esteem began to boost, and no matter how you felt, you chose to persist. You chose to persist until your asking for advice began to melt away. The shame that was continuously thrust upon you, for no reason other than sheer pleasure on the part of others, began to melt away. The constant struggle against everyone you knew…to be accepted by them, to be liked by them…you began to molt all of your old ruffled feathers off. Until one day, you noticed that you no longer needed your GPS.

~Janice M. Burke

Image by Magda Ehlers