Hmmm! This one always manages to hit a raw nerve and lets just say that it had the desired effect by the person saying it on making me feel incredibly angry and upset. Did I take the person to task? Hell no, the people around me told me not to indulge them and to rise metaphorically above it, but still – ouch!
Once I had managed to calm down and get some perspective on the incident, apart from feeling rather sad for said person who was throwing their mid-life crisis pram into my domain with no provocation from me, I began to think about that term ‘You’re small, get over it!” and what it means to me as person with restricted growth.
Darling, I have gotten over being small on a regular regular basis. You know what, it’s a hard slog to and something that has taken many many years of self-reflection and analysis. Has it worked? Yes, but it’s not something that happens over night and like most things in life, I’ve found I’ve had to work damn hard at it to make peace.
The best perspective I ever had was from another little lady. We were talking about how we deal with being visibly much smaller than average person, when she mentioned that she found it to be a cyclical experience. This has stayed with me for many years now, because this is so true. You can go for days, weeks, months, and if you’re lucky, years, without the height thing really making you stop and think about how it makes you behave, the effects it has on your life and how you choose to deal with these emotions. This in itself can be quite an isolating time and I’ve found usually compounds the problem even more so.
This is especially so if you don’t want to burden loved ones or friends or like the person above, you come across the ‘get over it’ remark, as the problem we are going on about is usually secondary to what we are trying to deal with; which is usually about asking for acceptance, giving ourselves permission to be accepted and accepting and understanding our own limitations in order to get on with focussing on being ourselves in the wider world rather than the stereotype.
It’s gotten easier with age and it comes from being more comfortable in your own skin. I’ve got my support systems in place, I’ve got the people around who love me and I’ve achieved most of the things in life that I wanted to and am lucky enough to have the opportunity to dream of more. Which was why I got so angry about what this person said, because at the moment, and without sounding to way out there, I’m as at one with the restricted growth than I have been in my entire life. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what this person can’t compute, because now, I can actually laugh at myself.
It’s dealing with other people’s uninformed and prejudiced judgements and opinions, when they have no idea what they are talking about, that is much harder, but that’s another time, another blog post later.