Fixed. Immutable. There are certain things that just are. Your eyes are a certain colour. My eyes are brown. They just are. I know some people’s eyes change colour in different lighting situations, mine do not. They are fixed, I suppose. Perhaps you don’t like my eye colour. There’s not a great deal I can do about it. Perhaps I could wear cosmetic contacts. But that doesn’t change the fact that my eyes are brown.
In addition to ‘fixed’ and ‘immutable’ I might also use the term ‘inescapable.’ No amount of wishing for different coloured eyes will help. No chants, no prayers, no invoking of The Secret (TM) will do it. So I guess I am somewhat resigned to the fact that I have brown eyes.
I rather like my eyes, but perhaps you do not. Perhaps, for you, it’s what Dr. Phil might call “a deal breaker.”
Perhaps in an effort to please you I do get cosmetic contact lenses. But it’s not really a change so much as diversion, a special effect… it has no substance, no power.
Now, perhaps, is the time to chime in with the usual spiel about having people ‘like you for who you are’ and mutterings regarding unconditional love. Perhaps for reasons that are hard to justify I want desperately to make you happy, to make you proud, to somehow garner your love, your affection and perhaps even your respect. Perhaps I can’t change myself, perhaps I can’t be the person I suspect you really want, but I’ll bend and distort and use mood lighting to at least give the illusion.
It feels awful, actually. It feels like hell. It makes me profoundly unhappy. But few things terrify me as much as the prospect of this particular veil being lifted. I don’t think I’ll survive what might come out of it. The conflict, the rejection. So here I am in a kind of holding cell, a personal purgatory. I can’t be who you want and I cannot be myself. I fail on all accounts. I don’t think I can make this right, I don’t think I can make this work.
And I am so angry that I find myself in this position. I am so resentful that this is even an issue at all. It just seems so unfair and I look towards people whose support and love I need and feel as though I can’t even begin to trust them. I don’t think anybody should have to go through this. I don’t understand why I should have to go through it. And like I’ve said, I am so angry. But what to do with that anger, where to direct it? At some deity for creating me this way? At the people around me? Somehow it doesn’t feel right to be so angry, so I swallow hard. Besides it’s not their fault I’m not what they wanted. I should be something else. Something better. Something much more impressive. In short, someone else.
I feel so helpless. I feel so overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what I can do. And I’m hurting…
