I like people. But I am not always comfortable around people, especially groups of people. Sometimes to the point where I would feel anxiety to be around small groups of people I didn’t know. It took me many years to understand why, and then I discovered a story that was inside of me. The story went like this….
When I was a little girl around the age of three years old, I discovered the little girl across the street from me was having a birthday party. As I stood at the fence gate she invited me to come join her party. Thrilled I eagerly agreed, after all, a birthday party meant birthday cake. For the next half an hour or so, I played in the backyard with the other kids. Then the father of the little girl came out of the side door and stood on the steps. The little girl announced it was cake time and told me she would go ask if I could come in. As the little birthday girl talked to her father, he pointed to me. She looked upset. When she returned she told me I was not allowed to come in. I reminded her I liked birthday cake. She went to ask again. Her father looked angry. She returned and told me I had to leave. I remember feeling quite disappointed and left out. Slowly I walked to the gate. As I did the children began chanting “Go Home, go home.” This made me cry. As I walked through the gate, I reminded them how much I loved birthday cake. They chanted louder and began picking up stones and throwing them at me. They chased me off of the yard. My brother who was two and a half years older than I was sitting on the crescent curb. I ran over to him. Seeing my distress, he picked up stones and through them back at the group of kids. They ran back to the little girls house.
Many years later I asked my mother about these people who lived across the street. She was shocked I could remember any of it. I reminder her that childhood recall was a talent of mine. She remembered the father and how he was a strict man and that he did not get along well with my father. Main message here; don’t take it personally. But that still did not heal what had happened with the group of children. I decided to meditate on the memory and apply an open mind. As I reviewed the story unfolding before my closed eyes, I saw a perspective that had not presented itself earlier. I saw the little girl talking to her father. She was insisting that I was allowed to stay for cake. Then the part where she began to come over to tell me to leave was coming up. I stopped the story right there. I paused it. Freezed it. And examined it. And what I saw changed the story. This little girl liked me so much that she stood up to her dominant father insisting that I be allowed to come in for birthday cake. She liked me. The group did accept me. Within this realization, something shifted in me, and I began to feel a subtle healing take place. And I also understood in that moment how important it is to go into the shadow memories and shine some light because there is a chance that there is way more to the story than the pieces we hold on to.
I still have a lot of work to do with expanding my comfort zones, after all, a life time is more that one or two stories. But when we edit one story at a time, the book just might turn out to become more of a comedy rather than an escalated drama. The choice really is ours to make. You are the editor of your life.
