7 Facts Meme

A week ago I was tagged by Come Running for this meme, and so now I'm doing it as a procrastination tactic before putting up other new posts. However, I have a couple of other posts in the works, and I hope to be putting them up shortly.

Rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post the rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself; some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names and link to them.
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blog.

1. I don't generally use, or even like, nicknames for myself. This stems from an intense dislike of the most common nickname for my given name. There are only about five people I can think of right now who are allowed to call me by a nickname, and they are the only ones. (If one of you is reading this--and you know who you are--rest assured, you're one of the five.)

2. I can do a mean Southern accent when I'm reading something written in dialect. I once made the collective jaws of my English class drop reading aloud in class, which was very amusing.

3. I always had a wide age range amongst my friends. In fact, for many years, it was very unusual for me to have a friend my age; all my friends were either younger or older than I (usually older).

4. I used to think I was born in a cursed year. Occasionally, I still do.

5. I can still do a cartwheel.

6. I enjoy shopping the most when I go alone or with very entertaining people. Otherwise, it wears me out and I rarely buy anything. Also, I rarely buy something unless it's on sale or so cheap that it doesn't need to be.

7. I know the hand signals for "Do Re Mi" etc.; we were taught them in my middle school chorus class and had to do the hand signals as we practiced scales.

I tag Apple, SJ, Erachet, Halfshared, Bad4Shidduchim, Bas~Melech, and Corner Point. No offense meant to anyone I didn't include. And those I did tag, I'd love to see what you have to say, but consider yourselves under no obligation.

Sunshine and Shadows

Have you ever met one of those people who seems to live eternally in sunshine? They lead enchanted lives, these lucky ones, in which nothing goes wrong, they never disappoint or are disappointed, sadness is nearly a foreign entity, and they are free to dance through life with a smile always on their carefree faces. And the spotlight is theirs for the taking, though sometimes they seem as if they hardly know it's there. Granted, even the the sunniest climate (or personality) will have a rainy day every now and then, but such occurrences are few and far between, and they are over almost before they are even started.

Then there are the people who seem to live always in the shadows. They are often unnoticed, unseen, overlooked by life and everyone in it. For them, life has held more pain than pleasure, more failure than success, more disappointment than hope. Even when the sun comes out it does not penetrate the gloom, and the rain clouds come rushing back with an unhealthy alacrity.

However, most of us are not so simply pigeonholed. We move back and forth between the sunshine and rainclouds, the spotlight and backstage. Some people enjoy external sunshine but live with internal shadows they are petrified to reveal, for fear of judgment, ridicule, or abandonment. We paint smiles on our faces and go out dancing in the sun while hoping our masks will hold the shadows in. Some people work hard and still harder, trying to gain their piece of the magic, their moment in the sun, only to find themselves eternally passed over or overlooked, relegated time and time again to the shadows. It is not through lack of effort that they do not get their time in the sun. Still others could be stars if they chose to, but they opt out of the limelight, preferring to work behind the scenes, embracing the anonymity of the shadows wholeheartedly. Their internal sun more than outshines the artificiality of the spotlight.

I've spent a lot of time in the shadows--sometimes by choice, oftentimes not. Sometimes the shadows were kinder; the sunshine burned. Some sunshine that most take for granted was never a part of my life, and I barely notice its absence, except when the rain is falling particularly hard. But sometimes now I appreciate the sunshine that comes my way that much more, because I know the shadows so well.

And I am learning to make my own sunshine from within...

Family Matters

I just read an incredible post by Corner Point on the subject of family--mainly, how each person's family is best for them, tailor-made by Hashem Himself and chosen by the neshama before entering the world. She wrote of her initial disbelief upon hearing this idea, and how it slowly sank in over the years.

I can relate. If you'd told me in high school that my family was the "perfect" one for me, I probably would have laughed in your face. The level of bitterness in the laugh probably would have varied depending on how much criticism I'd received in the near past or how recently I'd been unfavorably compared to my younger sister, but it would have been there. "How can you say that?" I would have exclaimed. "Why, I think they'd hardly notice if I dropped off the face of the earth, except they'd have no one to blame anymore." In most families the younger siblings are always being compared to the older ones and trying to live up to them; in my family, I often felt like my parents should have had my sister first, gotten a dog and lived happily ever after without me. She was the darling, the golden child; I often felt like I could never do anything right or good enough. Additionally, for various reasons, I didn't have exactly what you'd call a normal childhood, and I was forced to grow up far earlier than most of my peers in a lot of ways. "You're telling me that I asked for this in shamayim?!" I'd say. "You must be kidding."

And yet...and yet. Slowly, over the course of many years, and with a farther distance between myself and my family, I began to gain a little perspective. Earliest came peace with my sister, whom I love dearly. I realized that it wasn't her fault we were always compared, nor was it her fault she almost always came out ahead in these comparisons. She never asked to be the golden child, and she was aware of the unfairness of the situation and often took my side and defended me. Then, as I grew older, I became more and more aware of many of my friends' family situations. I began to realize that no family is perfect; indeed, I am surprised many of my friends emerged from theirs with their sanity intact. (For that matter, not all of them did, but most were fortunate.) I learned that I had friends whose parents made mine look positively angelic and doting by comparison. This helped me view my parents, imperfect as they were, in a far more positive light.

As I have grown older and more mature in my perspectives, I have realized that, though my childhood was far from carefree and my parents far from perfect human beings, my experiences shaped who I am as a human being and I could not have been the same Scraps had I led a different life. I've learned many valuable lessons from my family; other things, I'll probably spend my lifetime unlearning. Sure my parents made mistakes...well, they're human, they make mistakes. I'm human too, and G-d knows I make mistakes! So why should I expect any better of them? Their mistakes shaped me as much as their successes, for good and for ill. I recognize now how many of my strengths and good middot I owe to my upbringing, and I would not trade those for any other set of parents in the world.