The Space Between Us
I’d never felt very in-synch with other people, like I’d missed a step on a stairwell a long time ago, and my rhythm had never recovered. It felt like everyone else understood this highly coveted secret about life, a secret that helped them navigate through the murky waters much easier than I was able to, or so I thought at least. But I always seemed to be a pace behind, off beat somehow, and no matter how hard I tried to find my way, I just couldn’t get back on track. Growing up with someone who was more authoritarian than parent, didn’t help matters either. I could never keep up with his long list of expectations, his consequences severe if I mis-stepped in any way, which, for someone like me, happened far more often than I would have liked.
When I was a child, I didn’t realize just how this way of thinking, the behaviors I was exhibiting, could be damaging to my adult psyche. Because without me ever realizing it, I had found myself on a path riddled with minefields full of people-pleasing and sacrifice, for the so-called betterment of others. Perhaps it was engrained inside of me, because of where I came from. Indian women aren’t exactly celebrated for their independence, for their willpower. It is better to be seen not heard. It is better to be a wife and a mother, than a “career woman”. It is always better to bend, to break, to take away everything inside of us that makes us who we are, than to say no to our husbands, to another man. I’d grown up trying to straddle both parts of myself, the American Indian woman trying to unlearn something that was already a part of her ancestry, that had already lived inside her DNA. How could I possibly choose to take up space when my whole identity seemed to come from how my actions and personhood affected others around me? How could I advocate for myself when I already felt so off kilter when compared to my peers?
It took getting diagnosed with an anxiety disorder to truly gain clarity about my situation. It felt like a lightbulb had turned on, after so many years of floundering around in the darkness. Suddenly, everything about my childhood made sense-why I never felt like I understood the carefree attitudes of the children around me, why I was so affected by my home-life, why I seemed to feel emotions so much more intensely than the people around me. The fear was a monster, a monster that lurked in the dark recesses of my mind and greedily devoured all the space that I had been trying so hard to create for myself. But now, I had awareness. And to me, that awareness was the first step taken toward a path far different than the one I’d been trying so hard to trudge through. It was an awakening of sorts, a clarity that helped me see how tiny the space I’d built for myself truly was. It was like trying to fit a whole person inside of a jewelry box, and no matter how much I wanted it to work, how could it?
But what no one ever tells you, is how difficult it is to unlearn so much of what’s been drilled into you since childhood. Even to this day, I find myself struggling at times to take up space for perfectly valid things. There is vulnerability in change, a discomfort that makes it so much easier to run back to old, toxic patterns, to forget all the progress made and revert back to how I used to be. But over time, the small voice inside my head that had always been there, telling me when something was wrong, reassuring me when I thought I was being gaslit, became stronger, her words much clearer than before. She knew, even when I was a child, what it was that I truly deserved. She knew that I was a person with value and worth and what I had to say was just as important as the next person.
I began to stretch my limbs out, my bones creaking from all the time they’d spent keeping me as small as possible. I began to ask for more, to demand respect, autonomy, and agency. And slowly, over time, the gears started to move, the monster decreasing in size, in volume. I finally realized, after so many years of trying and failing to understand, that my space mattered. I mattered, more than the fear, more than the anxiety, more than the thoughts that did their best to tell me otherwise.
I realize now, that my quest to take up space had grown out of a necessity for self-love. Because when I think about it now, demanding respect and realizing my own worth were acts of love. Even during the most difficult of confrontations, with toxic family members, with old bosses, with myself, I knew, no matter how challenging and triggering they could get, that those conversations were just more acts of love. Putting up a boundary, even with the people I care most about, is love. Standing up for myself is love. Taking up space, with others, inside my own job and industry, in all my relationships, is love. And perhaps that is the crux of it all. When we realize that each one of us has a story, their own space that they take up, and how their space bends and curves around the spaces of others, we begin to see the joys of true camaraderie and intersectionality within humankind.
We are all beings just trying to meander our way through the chaos of life, and the best way that we can do so, is by not only honoring our own space, but by also honoring the spaces of others, however it is that they want to take it up. This means respecting their boundaries, helping those with less privilege than us create more space, and by accepting the fact that though others’ spaces may look different than ours, they are just as beautiful, just as valid. I believe that all of this is an important first step in creating a more inclusive, equitable environment moving forward.
We are all living on this tiny blue dot in the middle of the infinite vastness of the universe around us, after all. How we choose to share and take up space in our world has immense implications on how we progress forward, especially through the current predicaments plaguing humankind as a whole. Space has been and will always be around us. It is up to us to choose how we decide to move through it, re-shape it, and honor it, not just for our own selves, but for others as well.
