I’ve been reading the Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and I don’t know that I’ve read too many other characters in my life that were so much like me.  She grows up as a strange child in France, learning to draw in charcoal.  She develops a deep fear of marriage and motherhood. 

She shuns the new, judgmental Christian god to pray to the spirits of the forest after the teachings of the local wise woman. Addie venerated the woman, who never married, growing tall and strong as an oak, alone, seeking no protection.  Man after man is interested, and changes his mind until she is 23 and sold to a widower, cold with his mourning and desperation for help with his many children. 

On the day of the wedding, she runs, throwing herself to the mercy of a spirit of darkness, who strikes a bargain in exchange for her soul upon the end of her life.  She asks for nothing more than time and freedom.  He gives her a Faustian twist, understanding that to mean the purest freedom possible, and Addie is not recognized for 300 years. She first goes home to her parents, who turn her away, not recognizing their only child.  It takes time for her to understand the edges of the curse.

When I was a child, my father could read my mind pretty well.  Year by year that ability evaporated as my inner world grew and by the time I was an adolescent I had nightly screaming matches with him.  I did my very best to make myself clearly understood.  I spoke up, I learned the right words for things, and I always was met with confusion.  I would think around corners in order to attempt to figure out what people were expecting, and sometimes I would be overlooked, but usually I did not even have that comfort.  People would ask me simple questions, and I would simply never know the answer that would receive anything less than derision.  Other people perplexed me, there seemed to be a deep chasm between myself and others that I was constantly shouting over.  They would hear the echoes, faintly, and misunderstand my intentions, misunderstand my meanings.  I draw attention to myself, I don’t do things that I am supposed to do, I don’t act the way I’m supposed to act.  This has always drawn some minority of people to me.  I have had attention, I have had boyfriends, even fallen in love, without ever feeling understood.  Always trying to say the right thing, but always making people defensive…

Then there was so much chaos inside of my head.  I did things like start sobbing with no outside reason.  The cacophony of thought in my head would keep me from being able to hear, read, focus.  Sometimes I couldn’t talk at all.  I had so much going on inside my head.

All of a sudden the fact that I couldn’t communicate effectively became a debilitating burden.  No one believed me because no one could understand how my answers could be true. 

People respond to mysteries in different ways.  Some people get frustrated, angry, thinking I was being purposefully obtuse or lying. 

Some people pitied me, thinking I had no autonomy to communicate, no autonomy to control myself, like a darling child who would throw tantrums at times.  Be patient, she’ll tire herself out soon, then we can continue on with our day. 

Some people were just disgusted at my lack of self control, and too often I agreed with them.  That I should shut my mouth and hide myself away until I could act appropriately. 

I had people badger me, follow me, beg me to communicate.  But it was like I was cursed, no matter what I said, it would twist past my lips into a lie on their ears.  My parents would sit in front of me, holding my hands, offering advice on a condition they did not know. 

They looked at my actions and assumed I would be the same day to day, month to month. But then my cycles would surprise them, terrifying them that I may live my whole life in apparent torment and idleness.

I was sent to therapists, I was sent to psychiatrists, hospitals.  I would look for the right words, telling them as clearly as I could what I was going through, and they would look at me with familiar, big, compassionate eyes that had no understanding.  They would recommend the same things as everyone, they would change my medication, they would ask me to express myself. 

I would draw shocking pictures and no one knew what could cause such horror.  I got to be so comfortable with my demons, other people would share theirs with me.  I have heard many terrible stories in my life.  I don’t usually see much of people after that. 

I’ve only had a few friends in my life that would stay with me, reach out to me, and they are all comfortable with seeing people in pain for one reason or another.  I have never had the option of being gregarious, sooner or later my presence becomes uncomfortable and they fall away.  I have learned not to chase.

I broke up with the second fiance when I was tired of him treating me like a child to be minded.  He blamed my medication for me leaving him, after I had spent a week trying to tell him why I was leaving.  I dated for a while, hopping about, on dating websites, making rash and dangerous decisions.  Job hopping.  I turned 23.  I went on an internet dating website.

A man messaged me.  He looked like a criminal.  He talked like a poet.  He asked me why I loved birds.  No one had ever asked me that before.  It was a question I had answered to myself every day. 

When I went to pick him up for a date, I forgot my phone with the address, so I had to double back for it.  I ended up being an hour late.  But he laughed, and came anyway.  

He was practically homeless, unemployed, looked terrible on paper.  My friends all called me reckless and crazy for agreeing to date him.  He told me that he was the luckiest man in the world.  He told me story after story of his fearless adventures.  He never regretted, accused or doubted anyone or anything.  He bummed a cigarette and kissed me in the snow.

He called me kind, and intelligent, and passionate.  He had been to the psych ward too, and unlike anyone I met in there, he looked at me like he understood the fight to be in the world.  When I dropped him off at the end of the night, before curfew at the rehab, he listed all the qualities I like most about myself. 

I felt met for the first time in my life. 

Everyone else had seen their own creation, a reflection of assumptions and expectations, and I bounced off that constraint like a bird in a cage.  But he saw me, my true self.  I remember giving a hoarse laugh that was almost a sob, because I’d never heard anything true about myself out of someone else’s mouth. 

I was understandably reluctant to rely on him, but it was irresistible.  I feel like the scene when Addie LaRue is remembered for the first time in 300 years, it is if anything, underdone.  To have a conversation where I can say things without constantly metering for their expectations, it’s everything I had always dreamed it would be.  To have someone look at me, and know what they see, is a beautiful thing.