Being Different Isn’t The Same As Being Difficult

When our childhood has us believe that having different needs or ideas makes us unlovable.

“Ice cream sounds nice,” he told me with a smirk, laying in his hospital bed. Barely able to stay awake for long, these were his final days.

“You got it,” I said, and ran out to find the nearest shop. I chose six different flavors, packed in six different cups, feeling a twinge of guilt that I didn’t even know my own grandfather’s favorite ice cream.

I laid them out on his roll-out table, and fed him bites of each one to find his favorite.

Apple pie. He liked the apple pie flavor best.

I fed him a third, then a fourth bite on the tiny pink spoon provided, but as I brought the next scoop to his mouth, part of his smile looked funny. It was melting. Half of his face was falling down toward his chin. He looked confused; in my memory he looked a bit frightened, but I’m not sure if it was actually me that felt the fright instead.

My mother, a nurse, looked up from her chair.

“He’s having a stroke,” someone said. Maybe her, maybe a nurse. The rest is a blur.

The next four days were spend in rotations next to him, holding his hand and never letting him be alone. I was only visiting, I had few precious days to help my mother and grandmother here during his passing; few precious moments before it was too late. I usually took the overnight shift, sleeping in spurts in the chair beside him. But I’d stay through the day, too. Going home only to shower and eat, then coming right back.

Among the many of us there to help and say goodbye was a family member with a… different approach to life. To others. Charged with a shift (which to me seemed a silly protocol since us three women rarely left at all), this member was given a few hours to be alone with our beloved patriarch. Only this person didn’t want that time. They wanted to be back at the family house, where they could take a nap.

My Grandmother scolded them, and they took their scheduled hours. I was asked not to visit at this allotted time to further the point. It nearly wrecked me. My heart pounded with anger and fear that something might happen on their visiting shift and I wouldn’t be there. I ached to go back to the hospital and be beside my Grandfather.

Not just for the sake of a dying man, I was furious that someone would ask for their own selfish want in such a treacherous time. Angry for both grandparents and bitter that someone would expect accommodations for their own superficial needs in our shared crisis.

On my next overnight ‘shift’, I sat awake in the dark hospital while Grandpa slept. A machine hooked up to the patient next to his room, separated only by two curtains, started beeping. The doctor rushed in. Family started gathering. The room started to hush. I watched in awe and fear and sadness as machines began being turned off. The sounds of beeps being replaced by soft, quiet sobs. And finally, total stillness.

How could I be anywhere else? I thought. How could I want to nap when this is coming our way?

I look back on that moment with gratitude for having had the strength and opportunity to be beside him. I still cringe when I think of someone putting themselves above us all, including the person who died only days later.

But it didn’t mean that I was in the right.

When ‘Different’ & ‘Special’ Show Up As Selfishness

I follow the breadcrumbs through the past and find a story of being different, having needs and especially having different needs than others as shameful. Wrong. Bad. Unlovable.

I learned to be giving, kind, and predictive of the family’s needs to a fault. I learned this because for the praise I got for doing so, how it offered the validation and sense of worth that I had so desperately been seeking in the family. And by the sample set by others - peers, family members - who lost respect for having different needs and putting themselves first.

The one who refused to do his homework was called difficult and selfish, despite the reality of a severe learning disorder and unique educational needs not met.

The one was gifted the kind of whimsical childhood in which they had zero responsibilities or chores was called delusional and spoiled. Their adulthood has manifested in a reputation of unreliability, irresponsibility, and not being respected as a full-grown adult.

While I was loved and thanked for offering to do the dishes, always doing extra credit, and sacrificing my own wants and rewards to be generous to my siblings and cousins.

I came to see being different and having different needs as a bad thing. Traits that would cost me love and respect, because they would make me difficult and selfish.

Reclaiming Our Differences As Special, Unique, & Worthy

There are times when my giving and caretaking tendencies have granted me a miracle, like sharing ice cream in the final moments before my Grandpa’s stroke, of which he never cognitively recovered.

There are other times, like now, authoring a blog all about myself, when honoring that I am different and have different wants for my life outside of the 9-5 job security I have been told to chase since I was a kid, make me feel ashamed and embarrassed.

I worry that by wanting a different existence and different approaches to earning income, I am being delusional and selfish.

I worry that my dreams make me a burden.

But it’s also possible that having these, and working hard to accomplish them, might actually set not just myself free, but others as well. If I can create an ecosystem (a life) in which I am financially supported and recognized for my unique gifts, I can create the example for others to do the same. Thus liberating weird artsy little girls like me from the tyranny of corporate ladders and stifling schedules for their creativity.

In doing so, my being different and having differents and wants and needs isn’t shameful at all. It’s empowering. It isn’t the burden I thought it was, it’s a powerful breakthrough in a societal system that fosters complacency. It’s a battle cry for individuality and self-respect.

For now, healing this looks like: honoring the little girl in me that was always different, and telling her it’s safe to be so, rather than only rewarding her for putting others before herself. It looks like practicing the feeling of safety in my body, especially while voicing my opinions, wants, and needs. It looks like making decisions that honor myself, and trusting the universe to provide for those wants, rather than conforming and believing it’s not possible for me. It looks like fighting back the feelings of guilt or shame with messages like:

“It’s ok to be different. Honoring your differences is your birthright.”

“It’s ok to do things your own way. You’re not living for anyone else.”

“Designing a life that works for your highest self isn’t delusional, or selfish. In fact, it’s your duty.”

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