“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes have dropped out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Let’s not kid ourselves; I’m not “Real”. Not yet. But that doesn’t mean I’m not striving for that particular type of ‘ugliness’ in my life.

Today, while I was as work, I was talking with an amazing therapist about psychiatrists and medications and therapy and insights. She was sharing some of her a-ha! moments (which are really just about my favorite moments in the world to hear about) which got me to thinking about some of my moments in therapy and some of my moments with this very blog.

Sometimes, some things I’ve written have made G say to me, “Why? Why would you want to put all of that out there? Are you looking for some sort of validation? Ego strokes? What?” All valid questions. All without any substantive answer from me other than, “I dunno; I just feel like I have to.”

But today it hit me right between the eyes as my coworker talked of her past and what’s brought her to where she is today. As much as we try to avoid it, what happened to us in the past DOES affect our todays. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s not, but it really does affect who we are today and how we respond to people around us—unless you’ve had some really freaking great therapy to overcome some of those “default” reactions.

One of my biggest—and strongest—default reactions came into play quite innocently: I was a happy kid. I was a cheerleader for youth football and I was happy and smiley and bubbly. My mom, quite correctly, dubbed me her “little ray of sunshine”…. And I L O V E D being that. I really did. I didn’t feel pressure or that I “had” to be a certain way. For me, at the time, it was just validation for who I really was as an eight year old girl with a pretty darn great family life.

But then my mom died. And we didn’t talk about sad, difficult, scary things. I don’t think we were all that uncommon in that regard. Who wants to talk about that shit?! And especially who wants to talk about it to kids when there are no easy answers??

I didn’t make the connection until today. Ever since I was thirteen years old, I have been DESPERATELY trying to live up to my mother’s nickname for me: her “little ray of sunshine”. I have had NUMEROUS therapists/doctors/professionals call me out on the carpet for always wearing my mask of “happy, smiley Jenny”. I understood what they were saying, but I didn’t always exactly agree with their assessment that I should change that part of me. Who wants to be around a depressed person? Who wants to hear my sob stories? Who wants to see my tears, hear my pain, feel my fear? What’s wrong with a little mask to make other people more comfortable? It’s not as if my pain changes anything at all in their lives.

I’m not gonna lie: I still tend to subscribe to this theory. I’m not one to put my pain on display to the people I meet day in and day out. I’m still generally smiley and bubbly. And yet there’s one word that I am inexplicably drawn to the older I get: authenticity. Being real. Being honest about where I’m at and what’s going on in my life. I remember the first time I opened up about my struggles with depression and being met with, “What?! You, Jen? You always seem so happy and upbeat and TOGETHER!” Hearing that has always made me cringe a little bit …. And that feeling has grown stronger as I’ve grown older and spent more time as a psychiatric nurse.

I’m not always a “little ray of sunshine.” Hell, I don’t even know if I’m usually a “little ray of sunshine”! And part of that feels like I’m being disloyal to my mom since she was the one who dubbed me as such; however, a bigger part of me feels the responsibility to keep it real for my patients. Hmmm. And not even just my patients. For all the people in my life. For people who look at me at first glance and think that I’m strong or fearless or whatever. Because that’s not all of the truth. Sometimes it’s the truth, but more often than not, I’m struggling with all the same fears and insecurities as my fellow human beings are.

So today that realization hit me: the reason I put all of this out there, the reason I’ll talk about being an asshole or struggling under the weight of depression is not because I’m looking for ego strokes. It’s not because I long for people to say, “Oh, you poor dear!” (I might punch you if you say that.) It’s because I want to keep it real for my fellow humans on this journey. I want to be authentic with you. I want you to know that my soul has dark shadows and nasty bits. I want to throw off the yoke of “little ray of sunshine.” I want to keep striving toward ‘real’ and, yes, maybe it’s a little bit ugly to some, but that’s okay. My job isn’t for everyone to like me. My job—no, my mission—I sincerely believe, is to be real with you. To be authentic with you. Sometimes I’ll make you laugh, and sometimes I’ll piss you off. As long as we’re moving toward Real, I’m okay with the battle scars.