Policing My Own Existence

I saw a video recently of a little girl in what looked like a preschool recital. All the other kids around her were doing a cute little dance for their parents, but she stood there completely uninterested in making a potential fool of herself. At one point, she even says, with full disgust, "I'm not doing that!"

I'm not the little girl in the video, but I was that little girl.

It used to drive my mom crazy that I wouldn't do the cute things other kids would do. Even as a child, I hated the idea of embarrassing myself in any capacity—especially like that. I distinctly remember feeling that way.

Last summer, someone pointed out how heavily I police different sides of myself out of fear of embarrassing myself. It had gotten to the point where I was extremely particular about the ways I even moved my body. Then, a few months ago, someone challenged the ways I police my own thoughts, too. That was when I really started questioning why I do this.

Unfortunately, I think part of it is ingrained in me from watching one of my parents behave in a similar way. That doesn't mean that it can't change, but it will take time. Still, I keep wondering: why did this happen, and what does it actually mean? How many other people are living like this without even realizing it?

When I was a preteen, I had this insane amount of energy—like most kids—something I honestly haven't been able to recreate since then. I loved making my friends laugh. I loved doing some absurd bullshit just for the sake of it. I was the crazy friend making the craziest choices—for the plot, of course. But once I got to high school, that energy slowly started dying down until, by senior year, it had nearly disappeared.

Between the exhaustion and years of being told how "weird" I was—and internalizing that in the most derogatory way possible—the older I got, the more that little girl who hated looking stupid started creeping back out.

There was nothing I hated more as a teenager and young adult than being called weird. It was never even just the word weird itself—it was the look people gave me when they said it. I became determined to never hear it again as an adult. Yet even when I did hear it later on, it felt different than it had when I was younger.

What I really heard was, "you don't belong."

And when I was a teenager, truthfully, I didn't. Where I grew up never felt like where I was supposed to grow up. I'm grateful for the experiences I had and the people I met, but something about it never felt fully right.

As soon as I moved to Boulder, I shut a lot of myself off. I retreated into this shy shell of a person who didn't say much, didn't do much—just existed.

Oddly enough, I don't regret that phase of my life. It gave me a chance to reset in a way most people never really get to. I got to blossom into someone new in front of complete strangers. And through that, I discovered parts of myself I didn't even know existed.

But somewhere along the way, I also developed this deep discomfort with being perceived. Now I hate the idea of people watching me without my permission. I hate the idea of moving a certain way and someone laughing at me. Eventually, it became ingrained in my entire being: don't move like that, don't laugh like that, don't act like that.

So when someone asked me why I police myself so much, I paused at the entire idea. I knew I restricted myself heavily, but I had never thought to describe it with a word like policing.

However, they weren't wrong.

I realized I had tucked away these huge portions of myself out of fear. And I think teenage me—while respecting my choices—also feels sad knowing she believed she had to hide so much of herself just to survive.

Energy or not, I deserve to be loud, silly, obnoxious, dramatic, ridiculous—without analyzing every tiny choice attached of it.

Now comes the fun part and the difficult part: figuring out how to step back into those parts of me without completely cringing and gagging at the thought. How do you deprogram an entire way of existing? Why do I want to?

I think some part of me is missing because of how much I've punished myself into being palatable. My autistic ass is exhausted from masking, but masking has become such an everyday instinct that I'm not even sure I fully understand where it ends and I begin anymore. I think I want this because I don't want to feel like I did this for the entirety of my youth. I don't want that regret.

I guess what I'm really wondering is: how do you revert yourself back into who you once were after years of unlearning everything about yourself? How do you successfully add those pieces back into the equation? And how many of us are policing ourselves without even realizing it?