–verb (used without object)
1. to send out; emit through pores or small openings.
2. to project or display conspicuously or abundantly; radiate.
–noun
1. the act of exuding.
2. something that is exuded.
3. the act or an instance of oozing forth.
I have, until very recently, always operated under the assumption that people saw me a certain way. As a little girl I was convinced that others, adults and peers alike, looked upon me as the chubby little blonde girl who was nice to look at but would never amount to very much. When I spoke adults smiled, patted my head and changed the subject, or just walked away. Peers simply stared at me as though I’d spoken in another language. Nothing I had to say seemed important enough to hold their attention. At 14 I moved to a new school in a small, rich, all white community, and found it difficult to break through clique lines without compromising my individuality…something I clung to since it seemed to be all I had. And so I floated between the various groupings of teenagers, making friends where I could but never feeling truly welcome in any particular circle. I was an outsider for five years, the whacked out dumb blonde who was good for a few laughs, or even an intimate heart to heart, when no one else was around. When I spoke they either laughed and shook their heads or, more often, glanced sideways at one another and smirked, the secret language of friends who know each other’s thoughts while onlookers are left bewildered and shut-out. You’d think by the time I went to college I’d have learned to just be quiet. Give up. Maybe I was one of those kids on the after-school programs…the fat kid, the dumb kid, the socially awkward kid who everyone shuns for no apparent reason other than their sheer loser-ness.
But I didn’t feel like a loser. There was good in me. There was…something in me, and they just didn’t see it. And I so much wanted to be seen.
I went off to college with an experiment in mind. I would change the way people saw me, change the outward projection of the inner me and maybe that would help them see what I wanted.
I pierced my nose.
I tattooed my back.
I dyed my hair red.
I packed my bags and left the small town stares behind.
And an amazing thing happened.
Nothing changed.
Well, not nothing. I did suddenly grow a brain. No longer the dumb blonde with nothing intelligent to say, people actually did begin to listen. But they still seemed…bewildered…
And so now I was the weird chick who had a lot to say but that one understood.
I began to feel incredibly alone, isolated. I couldn’t understand how I could listen to others and completely understand their lives, their worlds, their everythings, but receive nothing in kind. I was becoming aware that I was, indeed, different from others. But I didn’t know how, or why. I lived, I loved, I laughed and lamented. I knew others did too, so how was it that I was so different?
And so I withdrew. Not that I didn’t have friends, I did. But even among them there was…a distance. A…border… of intimacy into which I could never cross. And my thoughts, my feelings were kept inside to be collected.
To be built up.
Slowly.
Like pressure.
I moved through life searching for answers, searching for a way to identify and express the beauty and truth I was certain resided within me, a connection to someone, anyone, who would understand, who would see what I couldn’t articulate and love me in my silence.
If this were a typical story I would write next that the miracle happened. That I was struck with sudden enlightenment, illumination that brought instant understanding and peace.
Alas….
At 35 I still search. I still long to actualize the me within the frame of my flesh. However now, at 35, I am no longer sad. I no longer feel desperate and alienated. And, while there was no miracle, no flash of insight that made everything thereafter a wonderland of perfection, life is good.
And happy.
And perfectly imperfect.
Exactly the way it’s supposed to be.
Exudations is the dash…the “in between” my past and my present, the journey of understanding and evolution of my soul….it’s the answers, and the seeds of new questions. It is the light within me, the gradual radiation pressing forward and through and out and,finally, shining.
Exudation 