Mountains inside a teacup

Small. Feminine. Unobtrusive. Useful. Delicate. Quiet. Cozy. Safe. Beautiful. Warm and refined.

Am I describing a woman or a teacup?

There is a passiveness in this description when applied to women. It is as if there is supposed to be a passiveness in the life of women. That we are meant to be filled with others, our lives should revolve around others, our meaning should come from others. Women are a means to an end, a vehicle to reach a desired end point.  Women like china are easily damaged and shattered only meant to make seasonal appearances laid out nicely and neatly.  

Too often I have found that I have internalized this message growing up. My worth came from making other people around me happy even if I wasn’t. My meaning in life came from allowing others to succeed even if I was failing. My purpose was to smile despite the pain that I felt. As I grew I was indoctrinated into believing that I was valuable if someone else saw value in me, not if I saw value in myself. My value was decided not by me but by others. The more I tried to appease those who I felt I was being judged by the more I lost myself. I wanted just to be wanted. To be loved unconditionally and to feel that I was prized, a treasure, a special find. I needed the knowledge that I was like everyone else was…something amazing, unique.

I did not understand my own worth. I did not understand, in my teenage glory, that you can be happy and sad at the same time and that that can be okay. I never knew my own chaotic beauty and how I can be both delicate and strong at the same time. Often it happens that we learn things from those around us who show us or make us show ourselves what we are truly made of.

Over the past few years I’ve realized that within a teacup there is a infinite terrain of mountains, valleys, shadows, and seas.

I’ve been told too often that I am too soft, that I have “Bambi eyes”, that I am naïve or too innocent.

For me my softness is my greatest strength. The forests that carpet the terrain within my soul are a safe place to nest and also provide a shelter for great ideas and refuge hopes. These forests started as seedlings rooting themselves into my soul. They sprouted growing fevered ideas about the future, shading embarrassments, and providing nurturance to new trees around it. I have climbed these trees and named each forest. I have meandered into their depths and back. Through these experiences I have been able to retain the softness and compassion that connects me to the heart of the world. It is those who do not know me that say that I am soft, for they do not know my strength. My strength is not overt. If you were to see me you might not say that I am the strongest person that you have ever seen, but you haven’t heard my story. My triumphs and pitfalls, my hills and valleys only allow me to appreciate each day as a new gift. Every sunrise and sunset, are bookends to a gift that didn’t have to be.

My “Bambi eyes”. My most notable feature. The depths of the sea inside of them have seen far more storms in their years. Only a skilled sailor can navigate the waters inside of them. The sea inside has not been calm for many years. It demands one who can adapt, who is non-judgmental of the droughts and the floods. While the seas have seen calm waters, they glaze over them, remembering the rough waters that altered the course of history. The storms that I didn’t think I would make it out of, that I didn’t want to make it out of. The storms that carved new trenches and thoroughfares in my “sweet, innocent, Bambi eyes”. The connotation of that phrase is that my life has been full of sweet and innocent moments destined only for those in a Disney movie…and yet that hasn’t been true, not in the slightest. My eyes have seen the whole spectrum of human emotion, both good and bad. My eyes like the sea have taken it all in and while some of it has found its way back onto the shore. There is still quite a bit left in the waters that must be sifted through by those experienced in navigating the waters.

I’ve been told that the world eats people like me. That I am more like an undercooked cookie, just finished on the edges and super squishy in the middle…nice right? No. Hearing from people that your softness, your compassion, your ability to feel human emotion is what makes you weaker than them is absurd. They are willing to divorce themselves from the few concepts that make us, the human species, us. People are under the impression that those who are more connected to their emotion, that express it more freely are somehow less than…that there is something wrong with them.

They are “sensitive, delicate, upset easily”… anyone seeing the parallels between the teacup?

There are mountains, valleys and a sea within this teacup. Peaks and pits, storms and fair weather. While I know that many will only see the teacup. The delicate façade that I present because I am unwilling or unable to show the infinite mountain range that exists within my mind. It is easy to see however, there are mountain ridges that are universally theoretical and imaginary, connecting us mind to mind…range to range.

Why am I scared to show others the deep sea that exists within my eyes, my soul, my heart, my mind? Have I gotten “harder” or more selective about those who I give ships to … There is an emptiness in the mountain range, the storm clouds which had threatened rain have changed their temperament and are professing calm seas, the shadow of the valley has been quiet for a few seasons. The fear of the shadow, however, never truly rests. There is just so much to wish for in this scene and yet the thing that is longed for the most is merely the courage to traverse the land.