Nice

I grew up with many labels attached to me..."nice", "peacemaker", "gentle", "kind"... to name a few. It took years to understand that this represents only part of my personality and that by suppressing thoughts an emotions incongruous with these labels, I was muting a good part of my personality and personal expression.

I became adept at denying to myself and others emotions contrary to these descriptive labels. Things like fear, excitement,  anger, sadness, were suppressed and swept beneath the surface. They weren't gone, only shoved deeply into an emotional vault.  They did escape the vault on occasion but were quickly executed or stuffed back into a emotional prison. 

Working at a psychiatric facility as a health technician for many years, I learned to not react in therapeutic and non-threatening ways to verbal and physical assault, loud or soft crazy expressions of psychosis, rage, inhumane behaviors,  and blatant vulgarity. For the needs of others and work requirements, I did things that I normally would not do like sitting in cigarette smoke-filled spaces monitoring patients throughout the day, cleansing adult genitalia or feces and urine, listening attentively for hours to people talking in nonsensical word salads or paranoid rhetoric, and participateing in physical containments. It took 14 years and a fair amount of gumption (internal desperation?) to finally seek other secure and stable employment.

During these years and even after, I continued to appear calm, unfettered, organized, and gentle, willing to sacrifice any impression of unpleasantness or discontent, while placing the needs and desires of others ahead of my own.

Inside me a rebellion was growing. Restlessness gave way to anxiety, and agitation and I built protective barriers for my spouse, parents, siblings, and children.  I refused to identify or expose my vulnerability. But there were holes in this fortress and anger occasional lashed out like fire which I quickly sought to extinguish without investigating how the fire ignited. I became a storm of reactionary followed by calm. Insecurities swimming on the surface all the while.

And it continued for years.

Finally at age 60, I reach out, setting aside hesitation and fear, allowing curiosity to lift this inward gloom into light where I can see it, acknowledge it, identify it, and nuture it.

Parts of it are ugly, unseemly, and embarrassing. Other parts are whimpering and wounded. At last, I feel capable of exploring it without falling apart and feeling capable of the task.

What a difference I feel to stop hiding this part of me.

I am not a raging fiendish lunatic that needs caged to protect myself or others.

I am generally and genuinely a nice person who is not always kind, gracious, or even innocently naive as I have indulged in thinking. I am not even a "late bloomer" as I self-describe sometimes. 

I am a finally liberating and accepting myself truly as I am.