The Personality Girl

(re-posted from July 28, 2011 - Black Becomes Me)


I was 17 years old and experiencing my first broken heart.  It was summer and my mom typically lay out in the sun for hours in the mornings before it got unbearably hot.  I didn't feel close to my mom at that point...I was a teenager and completely consumed with myself, but in the midst of heartbreak the desperation to connect with someone who loved me unconditionally was palpable.  I found her there on the balcony when I could drag myself out of bed that first morning.  She saw me at the door and motioned to the chair beside her, inviting me to sit wordlessly.  I sat down hard, closed my eyes and let the warmth of the sun wash over my body as tears streamed down my face.

"Mom, I'm never going to love anyone the way I love him," I choked out.  My body shook with sobs and I squeezed my eyes shut tight, trying in some way to close out the hurtful thoughts, feelings and memories.

She sighed and said nothing for several minutes as I continued to cry.  Eventually, she sat up in her chair and looked at me sitting beside her, stared for what seemed like an eternity, taking in my pathetic state with a kind of thoughtful meditation.  Slowly, she reached for my hand and held it wordlessly for quite some time before she spoke.

"J, I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but you are going to be OK.  This isn't the first time you have had your heart broken."

Confused, I looked at her through my blurry, tear-filled eyes.  I shook my head vehemently.  "No!  I haven't!  He is the first person I have ever been in love with."

"Yes," she agreed.  "The first person you have ever been in love with.  But not your first feelings of heartbreak; not your first rejection by a man.  Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"Daddy?" I asked.

"Yes, daddy."  She sighed heavily and leaned back again in her chair.

"But that was different," I objected again.

"Yes, different.  But I would venture to say that it feels very similar.  Am I wrong?" she asked.

I thought back to when I was 12 and my dad had left us.  I thought about how angry and confused and heartbroken I had, indeed, been when he told us he was in love with someone else and was going to marry her.  I thought about how my family had fallen apart and I had been left to pick up the pieces of my mother and sisters' broken hearts with all the inexperience of a 6th grader.  I remembered how it had hurt when I saw him checking women out behind his sunglasses at the pool; how I had decided then and there that the most important thing to a man was a woman's physical beauty.  Earlier just that year we had all undergone another serious blow to our hearts when we found out he had an addiction and had hurt young women throughout his entire life as a result of it...defenseless women; children, even.

My mom broke into my reflections and asked again pointedly, "Am I wrong?"

"No," I choked out.  "You're right.  I remember feeling like I wasn't good enough.  I remember feeling forsaken and left behind by someone I trusted.  I feel all those same feelings now."

She nodded and sat up again, this time very intentionally.  "J, you got through that.  You may still be muddling through residual thoughts and feelings about your father; you may be doing that your entire life.  But you stood up and you took care of all of us.  You were the only one who could be strong.  You taught me a lot.  I wouldn't be here right now if it weren't for you."

"Mom, this hurts so much.  I don't know how you did it...how you woke up every day knowing he had chosen someone else after so many years together.  I don't think I can do this.  You are the one who is strong.  I'm not strong like you.  I feel like I don't want to wake up," I cried loudly and hung my head.

"But you can wake up and you will wake up, J.  You have to.  I wish I could say that this will be your only broken heart but I can't.  You will have your heart broken again and you will break hearts as well."

"No," I said firmly.  "I will never make anyone feel like this.  Not ever!  Not someone I claim to love.  It's so mean and devastating and changes a person forever.  I would never do that to anyone."

She smiled back at me sadly.  "But you will, J...you will.  It's a part of life," she said softly.

I remember that morning like it was yesterday.  My mother was right.  I went on to break many hearts of men that I claimed to love and have experienced more heartbreak than I think is fair in my short life of 33 years.  My solid, stubborn belief that men only care about a woman's aesthetic beauty and not the beauty of a woman's heart has been a theme and played a large part in my romantic relationships.  I have come to believe that I am the "personality girl" and have nothing to offer men in the way of physical beauty.  I have come to believe that my only shot is that a man fall in love with my heart and then accept the fact that I have other things to offer outside of physical attraction - he, then, chooses whether that is enough for him.  At no time have I stood up for what I feel or know I am worth.  Sadly, this is due to the fact that I don't feel like I am worth much.

I have an amazing spiritual mentor/counselor who uses a metaphor of a diamond that I love.  She asked me once - Jamie, if I told you I have a diamond that is worth a million dollars and I go bury it in the ground underneath a pile of shit, does it make the diamond any less valuable?  Would you still go after that diamond, dig it up and treasure it?  If I piled even more shit on top of it that you had to dig in for days to get to - would it make that diamond any less valuable?  Would you not still go after it?  YOU are that diamond.  We have all this shit on top of us but that doesn't make us less valuable.  Hold out for a man who sees your diamond and goes to great lengths to go after you in spite of how dirty you feel on the outside.  The only man worthy of you is the man who sees you as a diamond.

I have learned the hard way that I love hard and as a result, hurt hard.  I take rejections personally.  It's my knee-jerk reaction to think that I am not worth anything, that the person I have chosen to love has seen that I am not worth anything - and I live in that place for a long time.  But somewhere deep down I believe that I am a diamond; at least, I want to believe that I am a diamond.  I struggle very much because of my rejections by men with this but - I know on a logical level that I cannot be the one exception...God can't have created me to be the only non-diamond worth shit of all the diamonds He has created.  I have to believe and cling to the hope that one day, a man will see me for the diamond that I am and choose me - chase me and treasure me.  But first and more importantly, I have to believe this about myself.  Until then, I will continue to give my heart away to men not worthy.  This is where I am at today - the "personality girl" with another broken heart and clinging to a hope I do not believe in my heart just yet that maybe, just maybe, I am a diamond too.