I was 15 and in year 9. He was 17 and in year 12.
I was dating and older boy (eeeeek!) and I felt so cool! Cool was not something that came naturally to me, it was something I desperately wanted to be but, have you met my parents? both not cool. I had no hope. Anyway, he was the best basketball player at school and with that came great prestige. We’ll call him “Matt” (because that may or may not have been his real name).
One Friday night we went out for dinner with Matt’s parents (slightly weird, I know) and the plan then, was to go onto watch a professional basketball game. I felt so grown up and so excited that this guy must really like me – since he was introducing me to his parents. I remember sitting at dinner, describing in detail the raft making activity I had done at Girl Guides the night before. I was in total flow….I had three grown-ups enthralled in my description of how we built the raft, how we sailed the raft and how we capsized the raft. I actually remember having the conscious thought “wow, I am so uncool (I mean, I go to girl guides for goodness sake) and these people seem to like me anyway - unbelievable”. I was practicing being myself and it felt so new and so good. And even better, the feedback I was getting from “the world” (AKA Matt and his parents) was positive. After dinner we walked across the park towards the basketball stadium. Matt and I were walking slightly behind his parents. I remember the smell of the fig trees, the gentle glow of the street lamps lighting up the crisp winter evening, the warmth of his hand as he held mine. And then, all of a sudden, the unthinkable happened, he broke up with me. In the park, 20 meters behind his parents.
A little piece of my adolescent self died that night. At that tender age of 15, I learned that actually, being myself is risky, people might leave me if I show them who I really am. Turns out, the break-up was nothing to do with me. Matt had kissed “Shannon” (who just happened to be the fastest runner in the school – damn sporty people sticking together) the night before and she had made him promise to break up with me the next night.
When I got home from that very awkward date (where I had to sit through a whole bloody basketball game with this guy who had just broken up with me AND HIS DAMN PARENTS) – I fell into my Dad’s arms at the front door and sobbed. I could see in his face the firm resolve to do everything he could to protect me from such pain in the future. His little girl was hurting and he would make sure THAT would never happen again. Of course, this is a natural response from many of us parents, to protect our children from pain – however, I wonder whether it is misguided? Because what I inadvertently learnt from my Dad’s response was “pain is bad, I am weak and I can’t handle my pain therefore I must be protected from it” – and protected by a man, no less.
And so, when pain came in my life, as it inevitably did because, you know “life is suffering” and all that jazz, I became very good at either avoiding the pain and therefore avoiding or leaving myself in the process OR playing the “weak” card and crumbling. I never knew I could turn right towards the pain. I never knew I had a choice when it came to abandoning myself and that, it actually could never destroy me, it could, in fact only ever make me stronger.
And so life went on, I crashed and burned, many times. I left myself over and over and over again. I turned to men to save me. I moved further and further away from my own wisdom – looking outside myself to be fixed, to be saved. Trying to fit myself into boxes that just weren’t the right size or shape for me. And then, I found mindfulness. I finally found an approach that did not require me to fix or change anything, in fact, it encouraged me to be who I really am – wholeheartedly!
This is why I teach it. This is why I am so passionate about teaching it to woman. We can and must trust and save ourselves and we can and must teach our daughters and sons the same.
Oh, and I did bump into Matt again. It was when I was about 24 and I was on a catwalk, modeling lingerie at a wedding expo. I spotted him in the audience with his fiancé. He was balding.