Oh, and I'm not a Protestant either.

Our homework assignment this week in DBT was to write down things we want people to know about us. I thought about it all week. There are things I’m proud of… things I’m ashamed of… things I guess I’d like people to know about. But mentioning them seemed more like bragging. So I started thinking about what I REALLY wanted the group to know. Then it came to me.

I want them to know that I’m not what I seem.

I think people see me and think that I’m easily understood. Maybe they see a stereotype, a cliché. I look like a WASPy, white bread, upper middle-class girl from the northeast. Someone who got a degree in liberal arts and has generally had life handed to her on a platter. But that’s not true (well, not entirely… I did get the liberal arts degree.)

I’ve always felt that people have misread me. In the past, people have taken an almost visceral dislike to me. Some people have thought I’m snooty because I’m usually well spoken. Some people have thought I was manipulative or needy because I have this mental illness. But what really bothers me were the people who didn’t dislike me… they just didn’t GET me.

What they don’t see is that there have been these huge rifts, these huge extremes in my life. Hell, these make it hard for me to understand myself

For example, there’s a big difference between my background and my education. My parents may be wealthy now, but my mom’s family is straight out of Appalachia. That whole side of my family has had little education or comfort. I grew up in a very rural town and had a somewhat… primitive childhood; think homespun, old-fashioned.

On the flip side, I’ve had these fantastic opportunities because of my education. I’ve met fascinating and important people. I sang with Dave Brubeck, I got to go inside a nuclear reactor (before it was running) when I was eight. I’ve been to the top of the Parachute Jump at Coney Island (doing an architectural survey).

But the biggest discrepancy by far, between how I look and who I am lies strictly within the confines of my head.

A lot of the time, I think I look normal or sane on the outside and feel completely insane on the inside. I’ve felt this way my whole life. When I was hospitalized or in a residential program, I finally felt like I belonged; like I was surrounded by like minds. I finally felt comfortable.