I have often felt human beings have a fundamental condition of feeling misunderstood and I was no different. All my life, I have felt judged and misunderstood which left me with the feeling of anger towards human beings in general. Hence, I promised myself I was going to be different.

A soft, understanding and comforting personality is what was created which I carried with such grace that I was a confidante to anyone & everyone who needed to express themselves. Now people started listening to me as if I was learned. My value with people increased. My views began to matter. People believed in me. I began to believe I was divine. I, was now different.

I fulfilled a promise I made to myself as a child. I thought I had found my expression and was committed to living this for the rest of my life. I was now expanding my personality. Suddenly in the third semester of my masters, she walked into my life and questioned my reality. She did it with such innocence and compassion that while nothing made sense, for the first time in my life, I felt understood. She spoke to me and I felt heard, She is Anitha Manickam(My professor for Relationship Coaching).

I was forced to confront my own reality. The pieces began to fall apart. I began to see that the personality of a soft, comforting, understanding human being was constructed as a revenge, against those who had taken away my voice. My life had inadvertently, in many ways, become an expression of that revenge. And every moment spent in that expression had taken me away from myself, I could no longer stay away from finding my true voice. She said, “first acknowledge the journey away from yourself, then alone, will you find your voice.”

I began to see that the personality I had created was a defense mechanism against those who had judged and misunderstood me. It had its foundation in resentment and a context of revenge. It was this personality I was carrying with so called grace. While fulfilling on the personality, I was destroying the person within. The facade that I had created began to fall apart. I was no revolutionary, but a victim. I discovered that we are all victims in our own little ways, pretending to have worth, pretending to be more, pretending to be on a higher level than most, when the truth is, in our own ways we are staging an escape from ourselves. The goodness that I had long pretended only hid the evil within me. The pretense was over, the promise revoked, the voice found, I created myself anew.

I knew that the game was no longer to be a good person, but a real one, for I saw the possibility of creation in the context of love & acceptance. I saw that I’m not different anymore and found acceptance for all human beings. We often perceive & create ourselves in opposition of how the world views us trying to prove that we are not that and lose ourselves in that fight, isn’t that disgusting? Of course, it is. But that is our design. We cannot fight it, but love and accept it. I can only acknowledge my design and accept that to understand all of humanity. In this, my reflection, I can only experience forgiveness for where I felt judged and misunderstood, acceptance for who I am, gratitude for my existence and a promise of Fellowship.