I was born in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Mornings were my favorite time of day. At the rising of the sun, there was often fog laying thickly in the valley in which I grew up. The wisps of fog would travel upward, growing less dense as it rose from the valley floor. Those wisps would eventually touch the reddened sky, brilliant with color. The cirrus clouds, high above the world, would stand out starkly against the vibrant sky. Their deep purple matched the palate of the mountain backdrop.
Somehow, seeing these morning views helped me to first begin asking the question, “Who am I?” I saw the sun rise brilliantly over the earth and stretch its rays over the land, and I began to wonder how I fit into the grand scheme of the universe. At an early age I felt that I must have some grand purpose in life, and that purpose was intimately tied to who I was as a person. To be “Kaitlyn” meant something, I was sure of it.
Perhaps it was bold of me to think such things at such an early age. Perhaps it was foolish or even arrogant to view myself as something special. But I did. I grew to answer this question “Who am I?” with a simple yet profound answer. I am someone special. I am different.
Sometimes this self-identification turned itself around to mean “I am an exception to the rules.” My parents will attest to my stubborn, strong-willed nature that strove to be that exception. I grew up in a household that did not spare an old-fashioned spanking, and I often times experienced the fullness of that punishment. But rather than cave to the punishment or feel remorse for my actions, I would stick my chin out further and proclaim that it “didn’t hurt!”
I didn’t spend all my time in trouble though. And when I wasn’t getting into trouble, I found that I could easily think of myself as someone special and someone who stood out from the crowd. More importantly, I began to live into that thought as if it were truly reality. I wanted to be exceptional. And so I did everything in my power to be so. I wanted to be different from everyone else. I was convinced that my experience was different from my classmates, and so I wasn’t bound to the same laws of nature that they were. I could go above and beyond, simply because of who I was.
Most of the time this inclination toward my “special nature” exhibited itself in my schoolwork. I wanted to be the smartest, and it was agonizing when I was shown to be less than the most intelligent one in the room.
I remember one particularly embarrassing moment in my grade school years. I was never a great speller. As I have grown and become accustomed to using a computer with spell-checking software, I sometimes forget how bad of a speller I actually am. I didn’t have this luxury of forgetting when I was young. I once took a 0% on a spelling test in the First Grade, despite the fact that I had given every single excruciating word a try. In my defense, I have often found that I spell words the way they sound in my head. Unfortunately, growing up in the foothills of Appalachia means that how words sound in my head are not the way they are actually spelled. So, for instance, the aforementioned spelling test was on words like “dirt” and “skirt” and I, quite regrettably, spelled every word substituting an “e” in place of an “i” due to my accent.
Despite my spelling blunders in school, I still sought to be exceptional in whatever I set my hand to doing. When I played basketball in elementary school, I dreamed of going on to play college basketball for the University of Tennessee under head coach Pat Summitt. But when I realized that I wasn’t naturally good enough at basketball to ensure a scholarship at any college let alone a Division I school with a Women’s Basketball pedigree like the University of Tennessee, I abandoned the sport altogether. “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well” my parents would say. This innocent saying manifested itself in such a way that if I couldn’t excel at something, I didn’t do it.
I tried so hard as a young child to live into this assumed reality that I was indeed someone special, someone different, someone extraordinary. The funny thing is that as I think back on my early years and think about things that enforced this idea that I was different, I honestly can’t think of any. I can think of many a moment that proved I wasn’t the smartest kid in class or the best athlete on the court. I can think of many a moment that should have showed me that I am simply a flawed human being like everyone else, but I still clung to the thought of my difference.
Perhaps it all comes down to arrogance. But maybe, just maybe, there’s something deeper than arrogance at play in my desire to be special. You see, dear reader, my desire to be special didn’t come from a place of needing to be the best simply for the sake of being the best. It didn’t come from a place of needing to assert dominance. It came, rather, from a deep, deep desire to be loved.
I grew up in a loving home. My sister and I were always well taken care of and were doted upon not only by our parents but also our grandparents and aunts and uncles, all of whom lived in the same town that we did. For better or for worse, however, praise was not given freely. I sought my parents’ approval in everything I did, and I quickly developed the concept that unless I was the best, unless I was different, unless I was special, I wouldn’t gain their praise. I tied together my parents’ verbal praise with their approval of who I was as a person. If they approved of my performance, they approved of me. If I could just be extraordinary in my performance as a student or an athlete, then I could be extraordinarily loved as a person.
It wasn’t just that I wanted to answer the question “Who am I” with the answer that “I am special.” No. My wants were only half the issue. I needed to answer the question that way. I had developed a world view that said “I am what I do” or “I am my performance.” And so if I was to be loved at all, that meant I had to earn it. I had to be extraordinary, to stand out from the crowd, so that I could be loved.
This was unfortunately reinforced time and again. I heard praise from my parents or my teachers or my coaches only after something was done well. I was never praised for the substance of my being. For being kind or gentle. For being funny or endearing. I was praised for memorizing all my lines for our church Christmas play and for making the golf team my sixth grade year. I was praised for making straight A’s on my report card and for becoming Student Body Vice President my senior year of high school.
I longed for love, for acceptance, for an emotional place that I could call home. I craved the kind of reception that would satisfy my soul. Who am I if I cannot stand out from the crowd and earn that kind of reception? Love was not something, in my mind, that was freely given. Love was something earned. Love was something achieved. Love became the end goal to all the hoops I needed to jump through. And at the end of the day, I was afraid I would fail to make those jumps. That I would fall on my face and watch the love I so desired slip from my fingers. And so my striving after “specialness” became both my greatest anxiety and my greatest motivator.
Perhaps you are like me. Perhaps you’ve adapted a world view that says you are what you do. Let me go ahead and tell you, while this is where my story begins, it’s not where the story is now to date. I’ve, thankfully, come to realize that there is so much more to me than just my performance. There is more to me than intelligence. And that means I don’t have to be the most intelligent person in the room so that I can ensure I am well loved. I can simply be “Kaitlyn” and lean into the fact that is enough.