They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us

by Prachi Gupta

It was not until I began to articulate my own story that I realized how little I knew about yours. You and I cannot speak because we live on opposite sides of that story. We cannot speak because my truth negates yours, and yours negates mine.

There was a time when speaking my mind was received not as a threat but as an act of love.

The problem with that kind of a personality, I said, was that when everything was peaceful, one had to create wars to feel useful or important.

Maybe if we could have acknowledged the pain of womanhood, too, we wouldn’t have been so burdened by its constraints.

“This is a dumb analogy, but it sort of fits. It’s like in Men in Black. If you don’t believe in aliens, you walk around like everything is normal. But once you become aware of depression and how it lies to your mind, it’s like you know about the aliens. You can’t go back to the way you used to think, and you can’t believe how uninformed you were.”

To love myself was to accept myself as I am and to live in a way that honored my feelings, aligned with my values, and trusted my senses, even when the outside world wanted me to doubt or shrink myself.

Therapy became a place not for repair but for the formation of a relationship with someone who helped me see that I am already whole.

I wish you hadn’t put up with it. I wish you had demanded more—for both your sake and mine.

It’s a strange thing to miss someone who is right there.

But I no longer live in the space where I tell myself that if I silence or shrink myself, I can one day have that ideal relationship with you both.