By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff
Anyone who’s met me knows that I’m not a summer person. The heat is one thing, but with summer also comes unattainable expectations. Everyone needs a bikini body, a new grill or a power boat to prove that they’re worthy of love and acceptance. We shame ourselves for having thighs that touch or dog hair on the car’s seats, as if everyone else lives in a Barbieland-esque utopia. The summer sun shines a light on everything we’re self-conscious about.
I’ve never treated myself as poorly as I did the summer before college. I withdrew from family and friends, keeping all my anxieties inside as I prepared to move out of state and begin my new life as an adult. Freshly 18, I’d never felt more childish in my life.
I had decided, subconsciously, that I was leaving my past behind. My mom, my dogs, my favorite walking trails — I couldn’t bring anything meaningful with me, so that meant I had to train myself to go without. After months of shutting out joy in an effort to “grow up,” it was finally time to leave, and I just broke down.
“I want to bring Floppy. Is that OK?” I sobbed into my mom’s shoulder.
My little stuffed dog, Floppy, had gone with me everywhere — from the crib to the classroom — for most of my childhood. He was a security blanket, protecting and consoling me every night as I battled my anxieties and fears. That meant he was also a symbol of childhood weakness — a comfort that I thought I had to deny myself to succeed in the “real world.”
Admitting I wanted to take Floppy to college was like undoing that summer’s worth of work. I thought it confirmed what I was trying to hide: I was just a scared kid, too immature to stand alongside my peers.
I kept Floppy close, hidden away in my backpack, on the 21-hour drive to Orange County. It felt like smuggling contraband. When I finally made it to my dorm and unpacked, I waited until my roommates’ backs were turned and quickly shoved Floppy under the sheets on my twin bed, covering the lump of his little stuffed body with pillows. There he remained throughout orientation — my secret shame, carefully hidden even with the lights out.
One morning, after a week in the cramped room, I heard a sound like a box of Altoids hitting the floor. I turned around to see my roommate hurriedly picking up a ragged Winnie-the-Pooh toy with a rattle in its stomach. She gave me a self-deprecating smile as tucked it back under her blanket.
Slowly, like she thought we’d punish her, my other roommate took out a stuffed polar bear she’d secreted away under her pillow. Finally, after they’d both shown their hands, I took out Floppy.
Standing in our pajamas, acne covering our faces, we all began to laugh at the parts of ourselves we’d tried to bury. We didn’t have to explain what we’d done or how we’d felt; we understood one another in an instant. As we compared the patches and scratches on our toys, I saw them — and myself — as we truly were: three girls, terrified of change and charging into it nonetheless. The emotion that welled up in me felt like home.
After that night, our stuffed animals sat proudly on our beds for anyone to see.
Shame is so ingrained in our society that oftentimes, we don’t question why it exists or if it should. It takes our shared experiences and uses them to isolate us, and we somehow convince ourselves that we’re the only ones ever to have a teddy bear or cellulite or a bald spot. One of the most freeing experiences we can have is realizing that most shame is arbitrary and, moreover, shared by everyone. When we accept this, we can begin to live openly as ourselves and give others the freedom to do the same.
