Just Be You!

By: Amy Marcle

This afternoon, my husband sent me an image with the quote “You are not meant to live like the others, you are meant to live like yourself.” To help me with my writer’s block, he added “this would be a good topic for you to write about.” I thought about it for a while and what angle I would use to elaborate on this statement. I began thinking about all the unique traits that make me different from various groups of people in my life, things that use to make me feel inferior, but now make me feel powerful. Let me share a few with you.

I grew up in a household of educators. If you’ve read very many of my blog posts, you already know that my father is a minister and also a retired high school teacher. My mother is a former substitute teacher and also retired librarian assistant for the local library. My brother, Allen, followed in my father’s footsteps and became a teacher also. To expand the education background in our family, my brother also married a teacher, and twenty-eight years later they too have children who are in the education field. My career preferences are one of the many differences between me and the rest of my family. I was dead set on not being a teacher. It took me an extra semester and five major changes in college to end up with my Bachelor’s Degree in Business Marketing. Business. The one area I can remember my father telling his students he would never pick to major in, and here his youngest child had landed herself a degree in Business.

It wasn’t really that the idea of being and educator bored me. I admired their work schedule, their summers off, and their ability to teach young minds. But, I wanted to be different. I had ALWAYS been different. In school, I was one of a handful of red-headed kids, one of a handful of preacher’s kids, one of a handful of Church of Christ kids, the ONLY diabetic in the school at that time, and usually, the only one willing to say whatever was on my mind, regardless of the outcome. Being different was nothing new to me. I had been picked at numerous times in what was all just honest joking about being redheaded and having freckles. I was picked on for not having the same religious beliefs as many of my Baptist classmates. And when I was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes, I was often questioned with things such as “What did you eat to get diabetes? Are you going to lose your toes, because my Great Grandma lost her toe because she has diabetes.” Comments like that kind of make you question your choice in friends and the stupidity of some people, but it all was because I was different.

Being different does not make you any better or any inferior to the rest of the world. My, could you imagine how boring the world would be if we all looked, acted, believed, and talked the same. God did not make us to be like others. He created us in His image to be like Him and to do so by living to be ourselves.

Growing up, I often heard the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses.” I heard it so much that I started to not like the people whose last name was Jones just because I thought everyone was trying to be like them. I did not want to be like anyone else. I often cheered for teams that nobody else cheered for (long time Cubs fan!) and took up for people nobody else would give a second chance to. The desire to be like everyone else never crossed my mind when I was younger. I accepted my unique red hair, my unfair diagnosis, and all the other things that made me different without complaining.

But, the adulthood hit. All the experiences I should have already gone through in college came after the birth of my daughter. I wanted to lose weight. I wanted to not have to take insulin. I wanted to be like the pretty moms on magazine covers who had dropped their baby weight effortlessly overnight. I wanted to have all the energy that new moms had at the parks and outings we visited. But, diabetes was hard on me as a new mother. And, it also made it super convenient to lose weight, by omitting insulin and leading me down a deadly spiral.

Even the eating disorder I battled was different than your typical eating disorder. Most eating disorder cases are one of three classifications: Anorexia, Bulimia, or Binge Eating. Mine was totally different, and rarely heard of at the time. Diabulimia, the act of skipping necessary insulin doses to lose or maintain weight, was unheard of in rural Tennessee at the time of my addiction. I found myself having to explain and educate medical and psychological personnel on what exactly it was that I was doing. When you have to tell your counselor about a disorder they are not familiar with, it makes getting help that more difficult. People did not understand. Doctors looked at me like I was crazy. I was not only the patient, I was the educator.

Eating disorders are not the only types of addictive behaviors created by a desire to be like everyone else. Almost every addictive behavior has at some point been hyped up to be cool in either commercials, movies, magazines, or other forms of media. Drinking, smoking, drugs, sexual addictions, are all types of real-life addictions that society often deems as normal. People see others drinking and the happiness it brings them and feel that it will also make them as happy as the people in commercials. But, in real life, we understand that drugs, alcohol, and addictive behaviors only bring more problems, solving nothing.

I say all of that to say this. If you find yourself comparing your life, your situation, your looks, your financial situation, or any other aspect of your life to others….STOP. Life is not a competitive sport. Attempting to be like anyone other than yourself is a slap in the face to our Creator who made us individually to be AS WE ARE. If you want to be the only business major in a family of teachers, be it. If you want to be the only child in the family who has a tattoo, do it. If you want to embrace your limitations and turn them into your strengths by helping others, GO FOR IT! Life is too short to waste it trying to please others. In 2024, I hope you find the confidence, courage, and faith to be YOURSELF!

Most importantly, if you are hesitant about beginning a recovery program because you are afraid of what others will think if you come forward about your addictions, MAKE THAT FIRST STEP! We took a big step in putting every detail of our personal struggles into this blog and it has been worth. It has helped us to move forward, and hopefully is helping others with their struggles as well. Reach out to us if you need encouragement. We are on YOUR SIDE!