The Role of a Lifetime...be sure you are not just playing a part!

I love my family; my immediate family as well as my extended family.  I cannot say I love them all as I have one aunt (by marriage) and her two children who are truly distasteful to me - and yet also amuse me.  I don’t go around making a big deal of my dislike of their imperious nature, but let us just say they are no longer part of my life and I don’t miss them whatsoever.

People in families are assigned roles.  This is a pretty well-known truth.  I think the issues start when someone within the family decides the role they have been assigned is not the role they want to play.  The hue and cry from the rest of the cast is sometimes deafening and often, unfortunately, hurtful.

I am the eldest.  As such, I got a lot more responsibility earlier on than did my sisters.  When our mother would go to work she would often inform me that if something went wrong (we had a short time between the time our mother left for work and our father came home) I would be held responsible.  A lot to take on for a person whose next sibling was a whopping 14 months younger. 

I was neither my father nor my mother’s favorite.  Dad loved me, of this I am sure…but his eyes literally smiled when he looked at his second born.  She looked like him and was meek and quiet.  He was in love.  Mom, well Mom had a favorite and an un-favorite.  Mom loved her baby girl.   I can say that without doubt.  Mom’s feelings toward me were a bit more ambiguous.

As I grew I started to see my role more clearly defined.  I wanted to go to college, but that wasn't part of the plot.  I actually asked about it and was told no.  Years later when I was in my 50’s I mentioned this at a family dinner when we were all talking about what we wished we had done as young people.  My mother, always positive, told me what a waste that would have been as I (in her view of my role) would never have succeeded with anything so academic.  So, I did what my role required I would.  Got out of high school, went to work, married and had two children.

My role followed the plot assigned.  For 32 years I lived my part.  Hating a great deal of it later, some of the acts more awful to me than others, with acts of sweetness intertwined.  I was so fearful of stepping out of the role that had become a stereotype of what my family saw me as.  I needed to go.  Things had become unbearable for me, but I stayed, and I stayed for two reasons; fear and my assigned role.

My head and heart raced when I’d think of stepping out of my role.  It is almost a type of Stockholm Syndrome.  I had lived for everyone else.  I was a darn good actress.  I made them all think I loved the role. 

There came a time, however, when it was enough.  I took a very deep breath, understanding that this step outside my preordained life was the equivalent of jumping into a sea of alligators, and leaped.  That leap changed everything, just as I knew it would.

In that leap I went from being the elder sister, personality much like her father, who said what she thought but loved you fiercely to the proverbial black sheep.  Because of the why I left my role, I felt the need to protect those that I loved (often to my own detriment) as well as myself.

 I am most fortunate in my cousins.  I have cousins by the dozens actually (not an overstatement).  If you take out the two from the aforementioned aunt that I could give a rat’s patoot about, and one that decided to take what she THOUGHT she knew about my situation and make it a gossip-fest, to the person, my cousins supported me and loved me.  I didn't feel judgment from my cousins.  I felt acceptance and much warm, happy “you belong to us” love.  My role hadn't changed with them…my circumstances had.  How that warms me to this day to think about.

Aunts and uncles were a mixed bag.  My father’s family was especially wonderful.  They loved me regardless.  They loved me because I was theirs.  My one aunt would call and call me "little one," and "baby girl," which for some reason filled me with joy through and through.  Her comment of “you will always be our darling girl, we love you simply because you are,” was something I took with me through many dark days.  Each aunt in that family let me know in no uncertain terms…whatever caused me to leave the role assigned didn't matter, my happiness did.

To be perfectly honest, most of my mother’s family was loving and kind too.  One thing I've learned, you can’t let the actions of others, or even their words have much merit when their only purpose is to be gossipy or hurtful.  A couple individuals judged too quickly and too harshly and when the script of the why I left the role was read, they felt badly.  It really didn't matter to me as much as it once had, for once you step outside your role…and hold fast to the role you know is best for you, you realize something.  You realize that at the end of the day, only one person can make you happy.  YOU. 

My immediate family was confused by all the changes in the role, and the leap I had made, but fairly supportive.  In fact, I only had one person who was toxic to and for me.  Not only did this person spin the wheel of condemnation and find me and my new role wanting, but toxic to their family.  Because of this, this person and their opinion will never matter to me again.  I am secure enough to realize I do not need, and in fact am harmed by, people of this ilk.  I will be civil only because it makes those I love more than air comfortable, were it just this person I would cut them utterly from my life.

My new role is ever changing.  It is one that always has me looking forward with hope and joy, and expecting change.  Different doesn't have to mean bad, or hard…it merely has to mean different.  Different can mean positive things as well.  We’d all do well to remember that. 

Changing your role is not a bad thing.  It is decisive to be sure, but more than anything it is a growing … freeing thing.  It has me realizing how much I could have made things different, had I the strength to have stepped out of the role earlier.  There is no sadness in that thought, just joy in the fact that I finally obtained whatever it was that allowed me (maybe determination) to do so.

Yes, leaving your assigned role is like jumping into a sea of alligators.  The alligators aren't going to be happy you decided to do so, and some will want to devour you.

However...

That leap into a sea of alligators has taught me so much.  It has taught me that I am stronger than I thought.  It taught me that those that love you, should love you no matter what, and should run TO you rather than from you.  It has taught me while wrestling alligators is ugly business rife with pain and stink, it also shows you what you are made of and the value of those that truly have your back!

The fact is this, changing from a role assigned by family, faith and others to the role God made you to have is positive thing.  Doing this has taught me that what matters is that I have only one life to live, this is no dress rehearsal, so find your own role, or make one for yourself…be yourself!

One day my play will have had, if I am lucky, a long run, and its season will be over.  I want as that time nears to be able to sit back and read the reviews of it in my mind.  My review, after all, is the one that matters most.  In some respects, it is the only one that matters.  The scene titles will be many and varied and all my own.  The role I played would be not a performance, it will be me.  All me, all the time!  Nothing saccharine, nothing fake or false, an open book and the star of the show will have had the role…of her lifetime!