Find Love Together – Logan Briana

I had a dream the other night. A lot of my dreams are versions of memories that I have. As if I don’t have enough anxiety awake, let alone asleep. But back to the dream. It was something from my childhood that a friend’s parents had said to her which she relayed to me. We both were too young to understand the phrase but I told my parents about it and I found out it wasn’t a positive description about me. Essentially, I was lazy and stupidly silent. I didn’t realize that something said about me over twenty years ago would replay in my brain let alone via a dream.

I grew up in a decently wealthy area and though my mom did what she could to keep her history private I’m sure people knew things. I don’t know if that contributed anything. I was a somewhat overweight child so I took it as something to do with that. I grew up with other words said to me. I’ve been told, “I was worried you’d stay ugly.” Which essentially was that they were glad I had lost weight in college.

I try to not play these words too heavily on rotation but they do come up occasionally. At least once a year. I think anyone knows that it’s not someone’s choice to replay negative things that have been said to them. Such as this time with was through a dream. As much as I like to not focus too much on how I look, especially the things that could lead me into dangerous territory, I do. Even more since I have a complicated relationship with food.

I decided to dress up and take pictures. Something I do when I’m sad since it forces me to sometimes wear something I normally wouldn’t and half of the time I feel somewhat better after. Though there are times I still don’t. This time was a mix. It was before I went to take pictures and I was just sitting in my car waiting for my friend to be ready. I remembered that I had that dream. Usually that thing my friend’s parents said doesn’t get to me. This time it did. It reminded me of other words people have said. It also made me think about how I never feel good enough for people.

I’ve never been a person someone wants. I’ve always been the girl that’s just there. I’ve had many identity crises in my life. A lot of it has revolved around how I look. I’ve written before about my weight and eating habits. I’ve talked about how I lost weight in college to then gained weight where I was my heaviest. To the point where it was hurting my bone structure. Like many people, I gained weight partially cause I was depressed (as if I don’t still struggle with that) but also to be invisible, especially to the male eye. Then I decided to introduce healthy habits again and my body has naturally followed it. Realistically life is easier in a smaller body. Whether it’s shopping for clothes (though right now that has been a big struggle) or people in general treating you differently. Before college, I was always a chubbier girl but nothing too crazy. I still got treated a little differently but I also think my trauma made some people nicer to me. As if I wasn’t bullied in high school. It was when I gained the most weight and then transitioned back into a smaller body that I realized just how differently people treat people with bigger bodies or who aren’t conventionally pretty.

It’s already a shallow world with how much people care about how attractive someone is physically. I grew up in places where it was also important. Since I wasn’t and didn’t have a personality to replace it with I got left behind. Everyone lost interest or decided to put more time and energy into other people. My family already struggles with generational comparison, and growing up as an only child didn’t protect me from that. My aunt compared me to my cousins. She rarely said anything positive about me the entire time she raised me. Anything I showed any interest in I was told I should give up on since my cousins were also interested and better at it. Nothing I ever did was enough for her. That led me to many relationships of trying to be good enough even if it meant me bending and changing who I was for them.

I find myself doing that with men I like. I hold back words and try to say and do things that I think they’d want to hear or benefit from. I bend more and more as my feelings get stronger since I get more fearful they are going to leave. With anyone not just men, I make myself smaller so I am not a burden. I always felt like a burden as a child, and I do sometimes believe my aunt felt that way. If I can find a way to do it myself you better believe I am going to try to do it myself. I can make the tiniest of mistakes and I instantly fear every worst thing possible. As if, the mistake will be the last straw for a person when dealing with me. I get scared. My selective mutism comes in, which can look different for most but for me I will be unable to physically speak. I have the words I want to say. My brain wants to say something, but no matter how much I try my mouth won’t open. A range of things could have triggered it for me, such as my mom dying. Most of my issues could probably be rooted in that. Most of my life if I said anything the response was usually yelling and overall anger. A lot of the time if I said something I was shut down or not listened to. I remember someone asking me my favorite part of a church service and I said I liked that it was shorter, but before I could also say that I liked the worship music part I was shut down with a, “Of course that’s why you liked it.” Now I might be able to be like, “Hold on I’m not done,” but back then shortly after my mom died no way. That interaction is one of my most replayed interactions from over a decade ago.

I was in speech therapy as a child but then my shutting down after my mom’s death solidified a lot of my speech issues. I still struggle with some words and now I’m not as embarrassed because everyone struggles to say some words. It’s when I am anxious or uncomfortable with whoever I am with and when how I talk is most affected. Thankfully, I am in a much better place. Being a communication major at one point and working camera and being associated with my college’s TV station helped. It forced me to talk and be comfortable with that. For a bit, I was running the same camera at games so I had people who were starting to recognize me and notice when I was gone. Which was a new thing for me. I was invisible for so long. I didn’t know how to accept it. I would think this will pass and I’m all the things I was told I was most of my life. I self-sabotaged a lot of opportunities I could have had in college because of that.

I tend to mirror whoever I am with. So, I’ve had to work on that. I’ve learned that it’s easier for me to be me when I don’t care what others think about me or I have no expectations from them. There is a balance to that. I don’t want to be cold-hearted, but also I need to take care of myself first. Something I had never been able to do most of my life. I was taking care of my aunt physically and emotionally. Her happiness was my priority.

I’ve learned that you have to be okay first before being okay for others. One of my goals this year was to fight for myself. I am prone to living with things even small issues until they can’t be ignored any longer. It’s what I know. Again, it’s another attempt to not be a burden and deal with things on my own.

But the thing is now that I am continuing to write this after Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election, it’s shifted things in me. To so many people in this country, I am property. Racism and sexism are very much alive, whether you don’t think it is. I have been empty and sad since receiving the news. Suddenly my boy problems and posting cute videos on social media seem irrelevant.

I wrote a post a few years ago about who I thought I would be back in the day when segregation and racism existed. I talked about how I would see people as humans despite the color of their skin. I would fight for them. The thing is, I am in that world. That world hasn’t gone away. Segregation and racism still exist, today. The question is, am I really going to be that person I said I would be?

One of the most amazing people I know who loves Jesus and people so well shared to her Instagram story “Jesus was still on the throne during slavery and the Holocaust too.” That was in reply to a tweet “You don’t have to ‘God is still on the throne’ everything. A sign of true emotional intelligence is being able to navigate hard things, without slapping a spiritual bandaid over it.”

My fear of not being good enough and changing who I am to make someone happy isn’t what I am meant to do. That isn’t fighting for myself. That isn’t fighting for people who deserve to be treated like human beings. That’s all I’ve wanted. To fight for human rights.

It shouldn’t be this hard to convince so many people that each human is HUMAN.

I usually end with a quote from Criminal Minds but I’m going to end this one with one of my favorite pictures of me and my first childhood friend.