Finding My Voice

I’m not a hand raiser.

In school, I often knew answers to questions but chose to recite them silently as someone else spoke them aloud.

My teachers reprimanded me for doodling in class, even though I took in every word of their (let’s be honest, long-winded) lectures.

Impending oral presentations justified lying awake in bed conjuring excuses that might produce an exemption. I took an “F” in middle school history for a presentation on Sacagewea, anticipating the giggles from my peers as I pronounced the foreign name.

I always felt a separateness from the other celestial bodies orbiting around me in the halls. Always too much, or too little, of whatever was needed at the time. Spineless as a jellyfish.

A third-generation people-pleaser, I internalized the message that to go against the grain, to make waves, or do anything else that messed with the natural order of things meant risking others’ displeasure. As would owning my own opinions or otherwise standing out.

This is why I was friends with everyone and no one at the same time. Why I made a distinctly un-impressionable impression. And why nobody but me heard my screams of protest, witty comebacks and insightful answers.

Then I found alcohol, and consuming it made me feel comfortable in my own skin. It gave me courage to lob the witty comeback into a crowd. To smile and talk to the impossibly cute guy who was friends with everyone, all the time.

I took this new power with me everywhere. I even made it through speech class in college by giving a demonstration speech on how to properly open a bottle of wine (a bottle that had been pre-opened for ease of use and calming purposes).

I quickly came to see this boldness in a bottle as my ticket to the roller-coaster ride I wanted to be on. I no longer had to stand on the sidelines unobserved and overshadowed.

For decades, this support, this crutch functioned as a handy accessory, or a hand accessory, much like a ring or bracelet that permanently decorated my grasp in social settings. I believed that who I was under the influence of this drug was the real me…the one not afraid to speak up and offer opinions or recite the brilliant answer.

Then it got complicated.

Often, the voice that emerged while under the influence was one of impatience or anger. The witty comebacks became grenades carelessly tossed into the space around me.

I realized in my rare moments of reflection that this voice, filled with selfishness and resentment, was not my voice at all. And the voice that was too afraid to speak out when I was a child, the voice that would rather take the “F” than face ridicule, had retreated. Retreated to a dark corner of myself, afraid of the voice of false confidence and biting words.

One of the first promises I made to myself when I stopped drinking was to find that voice again, and give it permission to be heard. Eleven months into this sobriety journey, I’m beginning to hear it again. I’m practicing listening to my true voice, but more importantly using my voice to speak my own truth, making waves, going against grain and all the other messy movements that come with self expression.

If I had honored that shy, awkward girl instead of slipping on a cloak of shimmering falsity, the narrative of my life would have been completely different. Yet, in a way, I feel like I’ve lived the perfect comeback story:

The quiet, people-pleaser, too afraid to speak on her own behalf becomes dependent on the larger-than-life persona alcohol clothed her in. She then had to work up the courage to untangle herself from decades of dependence in order to reclaim her true self.

I’m reclaiming her now, and slowly introducing her to the world. Every time I raise my hand, or say what’s on my mind, whether or not it’s funny or well-received, or even paid attention to, I’m reclaiming her.

And I’m finding that I do have things to say, that I can speak my truth, even when it’s scary. Most importantly, I’m learning that it’s never too late to become the person I was created to be.