Raspberry Iced M

At different points in life, we are assigned labels. Sometimes complimentary. Sometimes critical.

Sometimes people label us based on conclusions they’ve drawn after watching a pattern in your life long enough to feel confident about it. And to be fair, sometimes those labels are accurate for a season.

My therapist tells me that we are all made up of parts. Parts of our childhood, parts of our early adulthood, parts of parenthood, and parts of our present selves. She suggests that’s why we are always evolving – because the present us handles things differently than we might have yesterday. By that logic, labels often outlive the versions of us that created said label in the first place.

People tend to remember the pattern even after we’ve disrupted it.

I present to you a set of labels that have been specifically assigned and curated to me by people who thought they knew me well, at least during certain seasons of my life.

1. Impulsive. So many of my past decisions were driven by emotion in the moment. If something felt exciting, urgent, or emotionally intense, I move toward it quickly. Intention doesn’t matter to most, but there were times in my life when I just wanted to feel better. And that’s not an excuse. But at the time, reflection came after the impulse. These days, I pause more. Not perfectly, but more often than before.
2. Avoidant. I was an instinctive “runner.” When life became uncomfortable, I would move away from the discomfort rather than sit in it. New distractions. New environments. New circumstances. Anything that helped me avoid the deeper issue. Now I’m practicing the art of staying. I’m examining things instead of escaping.
3. Chaotic. There were seasons in my life where chaos seemed to follow me, or rather, I created chaos by making those aforementioned emotion-driven decisions. Those types of choices tend to produce complicated outcomes, but I was blind to consequences in those moments. For the last several months, my life, circumstantially, is quieter. More routine. Less dramatic. Boring, really. I am learning to sit in that healthy stability instead of the chaos.
4. People-pleaser. I tried so hard for so many years to be the version of myself I thought other people could stomach. At times, I eliminated pieces of myself that people didn’t accept, and other times, I highlighted aspects of my personality from which people benefitted. I wanted to maintain approval. And even though I don’t wholeheartedly believe it yet, I tell myself now that authenticity matters more than universal acceptance, and the truth is that shrinking myself to suit others proved to be a pointless effort anyway. Not everyone has to understand me.
5. Defensive. When questioned in the past, my gut reaction was to explain, justify and defend. I wasn’t always trying to deceive people, but it just seemed easier at the time to clarify, as opposed to facing the whole truth about my choices. Now I do my best to be accountable. That’s scary because it requires brutal honesty. But Present Me won’t let me skate by on technicalities. I have to do the work necessary to become someone I can tolerate.
6. Reactive. When emotions ran high, my responses used to follow immediately. Thoughtfulness sometimes arrived later. Today I try to slow down. Emotions aren’t wrong, but words said in the middle of emotional storms rarely lead to a peaceful place.
7. Defined by my mistakes. This one has lingered the longest, and it’s been the most difficult to slough off. There is evidence to support others’ position – that I have a pattern of failing. Failing family. Failing friendships, failing faithfulness, failing at honesty. So it’s up to us, as a society, to decide how to look at mistakes. This label has been slapped onto my forehead by people who had expectations for me that I could not meet. I can see those mistakes in one of two ways. Those mistakes are either evidence of incompetency, or they’re an opportunity for growth. I am doing my best, now, to not let those repeated missteps permanently anchor me.
8. Selfish. It is not required of others to accept my intentions. People see me from a point of view that aligns most closely with their narratives. That’s why you could put my boss, my pastor, and one of my siblings in a room together, and none of them would offer even similar descriptions of who I am. In fact, it might not even seem like they were all describing the same person. Some of the mistakes I have made were incredibly surface-level selfish. To others, it does not matter if I was breaking. It only matters that I chose the wrong way to breathe in the middle of breaking. And I understand that. So now the goal is to keep trying to do the next right thing – by my standards – not by anyone else’s. Doing that doesn’t take away the sting of the label, but it does give me a little autonomy.
9. Dishonest. Since so many of my past choices did not align with my core values, I often tried to hide or keep secret the not-so-desirable parts of my life. Other times, I performed completely, just trying to earn a seat at others’ tables, and in doing so, it has been difficult to draw a line between who I pretended to be and who I actually am. Combine that confusion with these labels, and I can only serve a sour, bitter cocktail of emptiness. I combat that now by analyzing each thought and each opinion with intentionality. I can’t be myself if I don’t know where others’ expectations stop and I begin.
10. Careless. I guess this is the most important one. People think that the mistakes I made were with total disregard, like I somehow thought – mistake after mistake – that I could avoid the feelings I am dealing with today. I think what most people fail to realize is that the mistakes I made came from a places of deeply-rooted pain, and again, that doesn’t excuse the things I’ve done, but it does offer some context. It’s easy to look at someone else’s situation and firmly announce what he or she “should” do. To actually do it, though? So much harder. I do accept this label, because it has been assigned by people who wholeheartedly believe that the mistakes I have made are a direct reflection of how I feel about them. I can see how it looks that way. After so much analysis, though, I can say with full conviction that my decisions had absolutely nothing to do with them at all, but rather, I made them based on how I felt about myself, my own capabilities, and my own insecurities.

The individuals who have assigned one of these labels to me don’t communicate with me anymore. If TikTok therapy spreads truth, then my entire existence can be dwindled down to a very specific pattern of harmful tendencies that now make up my entire character. And for those individuals who choose not to see past my mistakes, or the deeper reasons behind them, I can meet those people where they are, and even agree with them to a certain extent.

But maybe my energy is best placed in the determination to change my mind about myself instead of the minds of others. And every day that I choose to live a little differently provides just as much evidence to refute all of those labels. I’m 38 years old. And I’m late. But I am capable of change – even if it takes time, even if the work is torturous, and even if it takes the rest of world a very long time to see it.