I Never Called Myself A Leader

I don't mind being a leader, but I've never decided to take on a leadership role and then made an attempt to do so. Instead, in almost every group I've ever been involved with, I've sort of just fallen into one, or been pushed into one, and it always comes as a bit of a shock to me.

In elementary school, I was certainly never a leader. I was the shy, quiet kid who never talked to anyone but my best friend and my teachers. I didn't lead any groups or cliques at all; in fact, I wasn't even allowed to be a part of any. The closest thing I ever did to being a leader was when I ordered my best friend to play Barbies with me and then told her exactly what her Barbies should "say" as we acted out the storyline I had in my mind. I'm still not sure why I was able to do that; she didn't have to listen to me.

In middle school, I managed to develop a tenuous circle of friends, but I wasn't a leader there, either. In fact, I never saw any of them outside of school, and when I hung out among their ranks in school, I barely dared to speak, much less try to lead. I figured that if no one ever noticed me, they wouldn't suddenly see that I wasn't cool enough to be standing in a circle in the school parking lot with them, waiting for the bell to ring. I stood among them and listened to every word every person had to say, wishing I could have the exciting lives they had and do the things they did and nodding in agreement with everything anyone said, whether or not I agreed. Not the behavior of a leader. On the other hand, my school counselor decided I should be a tutor and so she set me up with a couple of tutoring job during my lunch hours, and so, with those students, I was forced to be a leader. Then she got me into a reading program where a group of us read particular stories and then got together over lunchtime to talk about them. This separated me from the masses and once again put me into a leadership role. She put me in a lot of situations like that, actually, and while I was pleased that she singled me out, I never felt quite comfortable being a leader. And I still don't know what she saw in me, other than that I got good grades and made healthy decisions—say no to drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, kids!—that made her push me.

In school, if it had been left up to me, I would have sunk quietly into oblivion and gone completely unnoticed. Various teachers got me involved in different clubs and groups, but I didn't put much effort, myself, into it. Still, somehow, I ended up being a leader. Through no effort of my own, I ended up being the secretary of the Spanish Club and a speaker at induction ceremonies in future years, a member of the National Honor Society and a speaker at their induction ceremony, the editor of the literary magazine, a columnist and section editor of the school newspaper, and a section editor for the school yearbook. I also taught Spanish to elementary school students and tutored children in the Indian Education program. I was on the High School Bowl Team. I went to journalism conferences and entered journalism contests. Somehow, even though I didn't feel like I was much of a leader or had any influence at all over anyone at all, I fulfilled several leadership roles. It was bewildering to me.

And the trend continues. I went to one meeting of the county Democratic Party and somehow ended up being the secretary. And as a result, I became the vice chair of the Young Democrats of Delta County, one of the county organizers for President Obama's campaign, and part of the county-wide leadership for Mike Lahti's campaign for State Senate and Jocelyn Benson's campaign for Secretary of State. I joined a local writers' association and ended up becoming the vice president when I was a third of the age of almost all of the other members, and then I became president, too. I could go on and on.

I wish I could see the leadership potential in me that everyone else sees. If I could, I would probably be a lot better off in practically every aspect of my life. I'd be more confident in all of my relationships, become a stronger member of any candidate's political team, have better luck in finding gainful employment, be a better activist for all of the causes I fight for. I would love to have the ability to slip into other people's heads and see how they really perceive me. I'm sure I'd learn a lot, in doing so, that would hurt me, but I might learn some things that would help me, too. And I'd learn a lot about what I need to do to improve myself.

But since that isn't possible, I think the best route is to focus on believing people when they compliment me, stop making up other people's perceptions of me, and figure out, concretely, what I can do to improve my perception of myself. If only it wasn't so much easier to say that than it is to do that.

I have to be better prepared for this whole leadership curse; no matter what I do, I end up in some position of power. I have an eerie feeling that if I'm not careful, I'm going to find myself elected President someday, without even running a campaign!

Chosen

This happens too often, lately. It is 8 am and I am awake, not by choice but by virtue of a flood of insecurities and yearnings. Today, I am pondering my feelings upon leaving the M&M Crew—my cousin, her fiancé, and The Other (lame as that is, I can't come up with a suitable description because I'm not exactly sure yet what our exact relationship is, and I try to avoid using people's names), along with the rest of the people I have met that are in their social circle.

I unexpectedly had a chance to steal a night away from my life the other day, and I'm having trouble figuring out why that was such a relief to me. Why it felt so good. Why I'm so disoriented by my return. I am very close to my Usual Crew, so attached to them that until recently, a week or even a night away from them was cause for great distress. They know me, they accept me, I feel welcome among their ranks. I am—or was, anyway—comfortable being myself only among them. So why, when I get a chance to run away to Marinette (half of M&M), do I seize it so immediately and with so little regard to the Usual Crew? And why do I feel so sad to be coming home when I am coming home to them?

The answer to those questions can neither be found nor explained in a simple thought, but I think it has to do with feeling chosen.

Whether or not it's true, among my Usual Crew, I feel sort of like I am a part of the group because I started out there and it takes less energy to keep me around than it would to get rid of me. I know that that's probably not true, that it's probably just my insecurities and fear speaking, but I can't seem to shake the notion. I feel like I am a habit more than an essential part of the equation. With the M&M Crew, I feel much more secure. I feel appreciated. I feel important. I feel chosen.

I've never felt chosen before. Most of my Usual Crew, I met at the coffeehouse we all hang out at. I don't necessarily as if they chose my friendship; instead, it seems like maybe they each, in turn, started hanging out at the coffeehouse and, because I was already there, a part of the scenery, I was incorporated into their lives. My skewed sense of self worth—I'm pretty sure it's skewed, anyway—is probably partly to blame for that.

But I've never felt chosen by any of the men in my life, either. There are only three who have ever been an ongoing part of my life. The first of them was from very far away. When we met, he was in town visiting a friend. And by friend, I mean a female that he was pursuing a relationship with. I couldn't believe, at first, that he was in town visiting another woman and he ended up falling for me. I felt almost chose for a little while. Then, as we got to know each other better, I discovered that the woman he had been visiting had grown distant during his stay. It wasn't until he came to stay with me that I figured out why. In the process of getting to know him before that happened, though, he spent hours of the phone with me talking about all the other women who had rejected or withheld attention and affection from him. In the end, I learned that he only really liked me because I was fat—my face, my mind, the things that make me me didn't matter—and the only reason we had any kind of relationship at all was that I was the woman who did not immediately reject him. I wasn't chosen; I was the default option.

The second of these men was someone I knew as a child. Our parents worked together and we were never close friends, but we hung out together at company picnics and parties. For years, we didn't see each other at all, really, and then suddenly, he found me on MySpace and asked me out. Again, I felt chosen—maybe he'd had a crush on me when we were kids, had just been waiting to find me again or work up the courage to talk to me. That didn't turn out to be the case. See, he has mental impairments and physical handicaps because of injuries he received as a baby. And he never missed a chance to tell me, while we were dating, that he was only dating me because I was so fat and ugly that no one else would ever want me and he figured that meant I'd be happy to have anyone at all, even if it was him. He also never missed a chance to tell me that every other girl he'd ever met wanted him, giving me the idea that he might cheat on me at any second. I believed that he could if he wanted to and was just keeping me around until he made his move. It became clear to me pretty quickly that, once again, I had not been chosen.

And the third of the men I have been involved with in the past is one I met online. He, like the first, lived a good distance away from me, but I was able to visit him a few times. When we first started corresponding, I was hopeful. Then, before we met when we were e-mailing back and forth, he asked me if I would ever consider having relations without having a relationship. The answer, at least in such a planned capacity, was a resounding no, but I didn't give him that answer. Instead, I said sure, I'd think about it; I figured that it was better than nothing, and I thought if I was the cool chick that didn't push for any kind of commitment, maybe that would make up for the fact that he most likely had hundreds of thinner, more beautiful women to choose from. I hoped that, eventually, he would choose me. I fantasized about having him come visit me, introducing him to my friends, dating, and, for once, feeling normal and good enough to be chosen. Then he started accidentally bringing up other women he had been with and, eventually, he explained to me that he'd decided never to be in a relationship again unless it was an open relationship and he could sleep with whoever he wished. And I, due to the distance between us and the difference in our ages and perhaps other things he didn't mention but I imagined anyway, was not even in consideration for being the partner in his open relationship. I didn't want to, but it still hurt that I couldn't, that I was just one of the masses of women he wanted to be with on the side. I wasn't chosen, I was merely available and desperate and fat enough to fulfill his fetish.

And other than with those three men, I have never had a chance to feel chosen. One or two meetings, maybe three if I was lucky, and every other man I've ever met has moved on to greener pastures. Not that any of them made me feel like a pasture anyway—none of them were willing to go out in public with me, or to introduce me to their friends or be introduced to mine. Instead, in every case, I met a guy online, chatted for a few weeks or months, and then met him in person only to discover that instead of a pasture I was a dead, dry field, merely a stop on the way to somewhere better.

But recently, I became close to my cousin for the first time in years (see previous blog post). She is the cornerstone of the M&M Crew. Even though she is my cousin, family, she makes me feel chosen. For a long time, for my own stupid reasons, I held her at a distance, avoided friendship with her. Luckily, she kept at it when I didn't. That effort makes me feel more worthwhile than I have in a very long time, and the fact that I was finally able to open up and let her in, the fact that I chose her, too, makes our relationship feel equal. There is give and take. I feel like she is not better than me, so I do not have to continually fight for acceptance, and I am not better than her, so I feel like she spends time with me because she wants to and not just because she has something to gain from me.

Her fiancé seems to enjoy having me around, too. My cousin and I complement each other well—we bring out the best in one another—and so the times that we all spend together are good times. For that reason, I think, he seems to like it when I'm around, and he brings out the best in my cousin, too. It is when I am with the two of them that I can best see how my cousin has grown and changed over the years and how much stronger she seems for having him in her life. Seeing that, somehow, makes me feel good; maybe her happiness with him alleviates some of the guilt I've felt over being so closed to her in the past. Besides all that, he's just a good guy—fun, funny, intelligent, the kind of person I wouldn't necessarily expect to like me. It feels good when he tries to convince me to stick around with the M&M Crew instead of returning to my other life.

And then there is The Other (I still laugh when I write that. I know exactly how much it sounds like I'm a twelve-year-old writing in my journal, but I'm just not sure how else to name him without naming him). Ever since I met him, through my cousin, of course, I have felt a chosen not only by my cousin and her fiancé, but by him, too. Whether or not I am chosen, I feel like I am, and even though I can't quite trust that it's true yet, that feeling makes all the difference. Before he and I ever met, my cousin mentioned him a few times. She told me she had a friend I'd probably like because it seemed like we had a lot in common. She said she wished we could meet and that he'd even expressed an interest in meeting me (at that moment, the tiny little part of me that believed her felt a tiny little bit chosen), but she was afraid that maybe he just wasn't the type of guy I'd be into. I, of course, was thrilled when she told me all of this, but I was still having a hard time letting her in, then. A hard time trusting her. I thought that maybe she was lying just to make me feel less depressed and isolated over the fact that she'd found a man who loved her and I probably never would. Even if I had believed her, I never would have been able to find the courage to ask her to introduce us. I was so beaten down by then at never feeling chosen that I thought I was too unattractive, too uninteresting, too unimportant, too fat for any man to want anything to do with me unless he was merely using me to fulfill a fetish.

Finally, one night, I got a message on MySpace from someone who said he was a friend of my cousin's and he'd been wanting to meet me so he decided to take a risk and contact me just to see what happened. I recognized immediately that he was the person she'd mentioned and I was instantly happier than I'd been in months. Finally, a guy who didn't just have a fat fetish or think I might be desperate enough to like him wanted to meet me! The only reason I trusted that he really wanted to know me was that my cousin had told me about him and what a great guy he was, and the fact that he actually contacted me made me trust my cousin again almost instantly. A small voice inside of me piped up to ask if he only wanted to meet me to make my cousin happy—that voice still hasn't shut up completely, but I'm working on it—but mostly I was just more excited about life than I'd been in a long time.

This all happened at a time when really needed to feel good, too. I'd just been cut loose by the latest in my chain of men who saw me once or twice and then disappeared. I'd seen this other guy a couple of times—he'd actually gone out with me, which was a shock to my system even though we'd just gone to the movies once, where it was too dark for anyone to see us together and to a bar once where he'd barely talked to me. On Valentine's Day, I was feeling more lonely and desperate and hopeless than I'd probably ever felt before, and so I did what women have a habit of doing: I asked a question that I shold have known could only make me feel worse. When I asked him if I had done something wrong, if there was a reason that he hadn't asked to see me lately even though we talked online all the time, he told me that he'd sort of been seeing someone since before he'd met me, and he just hadn't been sure if they were really in a relationship or not. When she pushed the issue, he chose her instead of me. And so, a couple days later, when I was in the midst of a nasty depression and feeling absolutely useless and undesirable, a simple message on MySpace brought me back to life. I went from sobbing uncontrollably, which I'd been doing for a couple of days, to actually smiling as he and I first IMed for a while and then ended up talking on the phone for six hours. I found out that we had lots in common and that I actually liked him, not just because he liked me first but because I was genuinely attracted to the tone of his voice, the way that his mind worked, the things that he told me.

My cousin was right—he wasn't necessarily my type, but somehow that made it better. That's what told me I actually liked this guy and wasn't just interested because he'd said he was interested in me.

The first time that we met, I felt like I was watching myself from outside of my body. My cousin and her fiancé and I and he all got together and went out for dinner, and I couldn't believe how me I was. for every other guy I'd ever met, I'd turned myself into a fake version myself in an effort to impress, but with my cousin there, I couldn't do that. There was someone there who would have known. I was nervous—that's an understatement. I was actually pretty sure I was going to throw up roughly every five minutes all night long—but that just made me a slightly more guarded version of myself. I didn't feel the urge to be fake. And over dinner, I relaxed. Everyone seemed to like me. They laughed at my jokes, included me in their conversations, didn't roll their eyes at me when I did or said something stupid. We went back to his house to hang out and watch a movie, and I somehow just felt like I fit there. I ended up staying the night because I just didn't want to leave. I felt completely light-hearted and at ease for the first time in a very long time.

I didn't necessarily feel chosen yet, then. Or at least, I didn't trust the feeling. I'm still not sure I trust it completely. The situation between us is complicated in some ways, at least for me. He was honest enough to tell me the first or second time we talked that a woman was going to be having his baby, and that his sense of responsibility ensured that she spent time with him fairly often. That isn't a good situation for the most insecure person in the world to be in and I have a hard time believing, sometimes, that it is a sense of responsibility instead of more intimate feelings that has created that situation. I would be lying if I said I hadn't spent hours comparing myself with her and coming up short. It doesn't matter that I've made her up in my mind, that I really know nothing about her other than what he has told me and what she looks like—I'm still scared to death that as soon as I let down my guard, he'll tell me that he has feelings for her still or again and that he has chosen her. I am equally afraid that he will tell me the same thing about any one of his female friends. I knew from the beginning that a lot of his friends were female, and that he is close to them. I found out as I started getting to know him better, and getting to know them, that he has either been involved with or wanted to be involved with several of them. Knowing that is comforting—I figure he must be an okay guy, because so many of the women he has been involved with are still in his life—but it's also disconcerting. I find myself wondering, in my insecure moments, if I'm just a game to play for a while, if he's suddenly going to just give up on me because he has so many other possible sources of the things I have to offer him.

But I want to trust that I have been chosen, at least in some small capacity, to be a part of his life, at least for a while. I try to observe the little things that make me feel that way. We go out in public together, for one; he doesn't seem to be ashamed to be seen with me. He's introduced me to a lot of his friends and let me get to know him. He touches me and kisses me in front of them. I've met his mother and his daughter. I don't feel, for once, like I'm a secret, hidden part of someone's life. He chose not to keep me a secret. He could have. I would have let him. I've done it before.

It's empowering to feel like there are people who have chosen me to be a part of their lives. It's even more empowering to realize that I've chosen them, because so many times in the past, I've developed friendships or whatever with people simply because I thought I couldn't make any other friends. Most of those people have drifted out of my life. Luckily, no matter how taken-for-granted and under-appreciated I feel at times, I know that my friendships with my Usual Crew run deep. I don't need any more friends than that. That's exactly why I've developed a bond with the M&M Crew: because I want to. I don't feel like I need them, or I didn't in the beginning, anyway, which makes our bond all the stronger.

The only trouble I'm having is reconciling the two parts of my life. I feel like my everyday life—here, at home, with my Usual Crew—doesn't really acknowledge me but merely exists around me. It doesn't make an effort to involve me and I've run out of the confidence and energy to try to involve myself. I think to recharge myself, I need to mesh that part of my life with the new part, the part that's been helping me grow as a person by making me feel strong, so that I can feel even stronger.

Maybe the Usual Crew will see something new in me, whatever it is that has attracted my new friendships, because part of me feels like they think I am lying whenever I talk about the M&M Crew. I'm not sure they believe that anyone would actually choose me to be a part of his or her life, and so I want to show off a little. And maybe the M&M Crew can see the way I am with my Usual Crew and understand me better. I am not as bold but slightly more sure of myself with my Usual Crew, and less afraid that I will do or say something wrong. Maybe each separate piece of my life can feel more chosen, understand that I like them enough to make an actual choice to have them in my life, through getting to know the other piece and seeing that I have other friends too. (This notion that no one can believe someone like me can actually have friends is part of my insecurity, too.)

Maybe if I can somehow bring these two parts of myself together and arrange them all into one more comfortable version of myself, then I can be the silly, articulate, outgoing person who embraces my uniqueness and allows myself to feel attractive and a little bit sexy that I am with the M&M Crew when I am with my Usual Crew, and maybe I will start to feel less like I am auditioning and more confident in making decisions with the M&M Crew, the way I do with my Usual Crew. Maybe I can start to feel like I have the right to fit in wherever I am instead of constantly relegating myself to outsider status.

 

If not, at least it's good to feel chosen for a while.