I quickly sunk into the wooden chair, despite its discomfort. I covered my eyes, plugged my ears, and made little sing-song voices to hide the fact that my parents were squeezing any ounce of self-confidence I had fabricated over the years. Every story, every quirk, every skill I worked so hard to bury, was exposed. There was no hiding the fact that the boy I wanted to marry got to hear all about the real me, and this time I couldn’t change it.
From a little kid to 14 years old, I was a horse girl. Yes, all the stereotypes applied to me. I walked around with proud red cowgirl boots and went to horse lessons. To make matters worse, I would pretend to be whatever animal I was obsessed with that week.
In 2nd grade, I begged my mom to make me a raccoon costume for Halloween. She made a grey onesie, black velvet ears and painted my face to replicate a racoon’s mask. I still have those pictures of me dressed up. From 15 to 19, I spent a great deal of my free time deleting pictures, ripping out journal entries, throwing away schoolwork and rewriting my narrative. I subconsciously started introducing as myself “Izzy” to distance myself from the horse crazed “Isabelle”. I worked so hard to change my personality and as I stepped back into the shadows, it seemed everyone else forgot about that horse girl too.
Before I got engaged, I brought my boyfriend to Utah to meet my family. He passed with flying colors of approval from my parents and siblings. The last night of our trip, we went to an Italian restaurant in Ogden. We ordered appetizers and my parents got to share their stories of snowboarding while my boyfriend shared surfing memories. Things were going great, they were getting along and I got to see the look of joy from the 3 people I loved the most in the world. Our dinners came to the table, then my nightmare began.
“Isabelle loved to write stories about horses. She used to make books and read them to us.”
“Isabelle has a great singing voice! She used to write songs and sing them on the ukulele.”
“One year for Halloween, Isabelle was a racoon! She would crawl on the ground to get into character.”
My boyfriend was laughing hysterically and intermittently looking my way. He had this positive yet shocked expression that there was so much he didn’t know about me. My parents beamed with pride as they shared story after story. I felt a physical pain caused purely by my own mind and I shut down for the rest of the night.
When we got home, my boyfriend gave me an understanding hug. He pulled back and asked, “Why did you never tell me?” In three months of us dating, I worked so hard to hide any emotion I felt. I didn’t want to be that girl. I liked this guy so badly that I didn’t want to mess things up. I never told him how I was a great artist or wrote beautiful poetry. I never told him how my first word was horse or that I was an emotional person. Yet that night, the walls I had built started to crumble. To my surprise, he told me he loved me more because of my quirky traits. The gears in my brain began to turn; sometimes people love you even if you think you’re weird, even if you don’t deserve it at all. Sometimes, it’s just there.
Isabelle Justice 