A Necessary Handicap
Looking back, I recognized a person I didn’t know. I saw a familiar face, but did I really know that person? The headlines included my name, “D.J. Drummond,” but it still felt as if I were meeting someone I vaguely remembered.
This person, D.J., held records. D.J. is only one of two Accomack County Eastern Shore runners to win the District title twice, to qualify for state three years in a row, and has the fastest time ran by any cross-country runner from the local area at the state race. I read that D.J. made the regional all team both as a junior and senior while on the Cheerleading team. In 2010, D.J. was awarded the title of Male Cheerleader MVP. All of this was quoted along side of pictures, of D.J., in the local newspaper. And still, it was unclear to me…who was this person?
Attempts to Become More.
During the summer before my senior year of high school, I drove 45 minutes once a week to attend tumbling training. I had three months to learn how to back flip and/or front flip. On my first day, I quickly recognized myself as the oldest person (by at least 10 years) in the 7PM tumbling class held on Wednesday. Still, I was determined, I didn’t care what I looked like. It felt like something I had to do, it being my senior only raised the stakes.
There was the time I applied to John Hopkins University’s graduate program for writing. I was working, secretly, on my application for months. I’d hired a writing coach to help me with my writing and submission for the application. I was excited. I was hopeful that getting into this school, into this program would help facilitate, in a major way, me becoming the writer I always wanted to be.
Exhausted Into Seeing.
I find myself holding back tears. Tears from a life spent trying over and over again. Tears from all of the exhausting efforts and money that I have spent thinking that who I was, wasn’t enough. Till this day, I have never learned to tumble. I was so close. After three months, it was time to get back to not only cheerleading, but cross country, as both seasons were starting back at the same time.
It’s only in this moment, looking back at the D.J. that I didn’t know, that I see a person who was, in fact, whole. It was their perceived handicaps that made them so. I was chasing perfection, working to attain and become something that was never necessary for me to be great, to be me. Despite the fact that I couldn’t tumble, one of two of the males who couldn’t out of seven total on the team, I was the one chosen for Male MVP. I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t do what the majority of the guys could do, I couldn’t do what I thought I needed to do. I couldn’t receive that awarded then; twelve years has since passed, and only now am I finally accepting this award.
I never got into John Hopkins University. They sent me a gentle, but not so gentle denial letter. It smelled of a similar stench, like the letters I received from UVA and Duke—places I thought I had to attend in order to, in one way or another, “be somebody.”
Enough is Enough.
I am exhausted. I am exhausted from effort. And while this exhaustion is karma rebounding, the reward I am receiving for my efforts is vision, wisdom, and sustaining self-compassion. I see now, and only now, that my handicaps were necessary. They were gifts. They told, in their own way, a story of learning to accept and see oneself. They are showing me, now, that I was enough…that I am enough. They have become not only gifts, but my teachers.
And I suspect that you too are denying your handicaps. I suspect that you too are trying to pile on something extra to who you are in order for you to be and feel whole. I sense that you are hiding something, afraid that what you reveal will expose you as weak—confirming who your insecurities say you are. I say, to your perceived faults and misconstrued shortcomings, reveal them. Let them out. Let you out. Bask in them. Surrender in your attempts to cover up and be something that you are not, because in that place, you will find your power. And more than your power, you will find freedom. You will find permission to actually live your life, to love your life, and be who you are in any given moment. And as you do this, remember, you are also freeing others to do the exact same.