Half-pint.
My first love was reading. Ever since I flew through my giant ABC’s coloring book in kindergarten, I was hooked on words. I loved each and every one of them. I loved how I could spin a word out of thin air by assembling a few letters from a menu of 26. I was fascinated. How letters form words and words form sentences and how those sentences came to life by evoking images and feelings. What a magical, never-ending, always expanding world I had entered – and it was free! I didn’t need permission and I didn’t need money to access it. Once I figured out the patterns of letters and words and language, I was on a mission to devour worlds that were bigger than my own. The first world I entered was that of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was given the big yellow boxed set of nine titles one Christmas – I think it was the second or third grade. I was mesmerized, transported to the sounds and smells of horses in the barn, prairie dresses with pretty patterns and lace-up boots, the warmth of wood stoves, and togetherness in the pine trees and on the wide open prairie. I identified deeply with the main character. Her independence. Her lack of interest in nurturing. While Mary was a big help to Ma in the kitchen and with their younger siblings, Laura followed Pa around outside, keeping him company in the more rugged arts of survival. I read that box set over and over, and whenever I got to the part of Alonso, I felt utterly betrayed. Because I thought Laura was like me – too independent to become enmeshed with another. I was so disappointed, and to this day I still question whether she really fell in love with him or simply gave up being so independent because it would have made her a non-entity at best and a pariah at worst. When I first met my Human Design, it was such a relief. Because I spent so much of my life questioning what was ‘wrong’ with me because I just didn’t want to be enmeshed. It turns out, I’m not designed for it. It’s not an impossibility, but it would be an extremely rare occurrence, like catching lightning in a bottle, to weave my life into another’s or vice versa. I was born to explore and to float and to follow my own curiosity and drive in a way that is extreme and unpredictable – I’m not built for routine or to be “tied down” to one person or one idea. When I saw myself explained so simply, clearly, and objectively in black text, I let go of 25 years of feeling bad about not fitting in, not wanting what other people wanted, like marriage and kids. I’m still disappointed with Laura. Because I think she was built a lot more like me than she was built like Ma or Mary.
