I've never been one to like the labels that society puts on people. Maybe it's because society chooses to put so many on my life. I've also never been one to bare my thoughts and feelings for all to hear/see. But I've recently had to come to terms with adding more societal labels to my collection. Maybe it's just all the drama going on in my life and in the world, but I'm just tired of just being a set of labels.
I've dealt with labels my entire life; truly, we all do. Let's face it, I was the fifteen year old who had a baby out of wedlock. I was a single mother, a slut, a whore; the list goes on. In reality, I was just a naive girl with a really interesting and twisted fate. The looks, the whispers; it's something I learned to deal with and pretended they didn't get to me. I've come a long way from those days, and I proved all of those people wrong the day I walked across the stage at my college graduation.
Now, I'm married to the love of my life, who happens to be a woman just as I am.Therefore society says I'm a lesbian. Better yet, we're told we break away from the "stereotypical lesbian." What does even that mean? What's a "stereotypical" lesbian? What you mean because we don't have short hair and wear masculine clothes? Have these people met many lesbians? So now we must have yet another label: feminine or "fem". On the flip-side, what these same people supposedly call "stereotypical lesbians" are given even more labels: butch or dyke. I hate when someone looks at me, after finding out I'm married to a woman, and says, "Oh, I didn't know, you don't look like a lesbian." Or wait for it..."Who's the guy in your relationship?" Umm...do you know the dictionary definition of a lesbian? Yes? No? Let me enlighten you, we're both women.
Everyday society places labels upon us based on our beliefs, our feelings, our attitude, our choices, and things completely out of our control.
Society has added that I am ADHD, I have anxiety, and I'm depressed. Let's add more: I'm a failure, attention seeking, worthless...where do the labels end? It's time we quit looking at the labels and begin looking at the person.
Thankfully, our little man does not see labels. See our little man has a very diverse group of friends both in gender and ethnicity; he has ever since he started daycare at three. Maybe we could all learn a little from our children. We aren't born with these prejudices; it's learned.
Last year, like me, our little man was diagnosed with ADHD. We struggled with his diagnosis and the thought of putting him on medication for a while. Thankfully, we did and he has benefited greatly from it. We were also told that he hits closely to being diagnosed with Asperger's because he hit 6/15 markers on the Autism scale. And he has a speech impairment due to improper articulation. Now...you might think that this child I'm describing is a hyper, loner child who does poorly in school. That's not the case though. We don't use his "disabilities" as an excuse. No he makes straight A's in school. He made a perfect score on the state math test last year and did very well in the other subject areas. He is currently being tested for the gifted program at school. This same child dances and acts. (Whoa, the labels that can come from those alone.) He has friends. Yes, he is socially awkward at times. Yes, he has moments of high activity and lack of focus. But he's still a child. He's a ten year old boy. He's our son. None of those other labels matter at the end of the day.
One of the biggest fights we have to conquer first is being more than our labels. Don't let the labels that society places on you define or change who you know yourself as.
My challenge for you: Start seeing the person instead of the label.
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