Tag: family systems

365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 3 - School as a Laboratory/Uncategorized

Husky Jean Calculus- Day 28

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Prompt – Trying to fit in.

Growing up, we never had enough money for the things everyone wanted. Back-to-school shopping was always tense because school supplies and clothes were expensive, and the margin was thin on a good month. My older siblings were teenagers, which meant shoes and clothes mattered in the unspoken social calculus of school. My mother, meanwhile, was running a different set of numbers, the kind tied to groceries, bills to be paid, and the quiet reality of coming up short and it all being her fault.

One afternoon in a store, my mother’s shoulders were tight as her attention was divided between price tags and possibility. She was doing the math in her head, calculations that did not resolve cleanly. I noticed, as I always noticed because I was old enough to see but I was far too young to understand what it actually was I was seeing.

So I erased myself. I said I would take whatever was cheapest. If it meant the not-cool clothes, that was fine or the cheaper Rose Art crayons, so be it. I said it lightly, as if it cost nothing, but I knew those words gave my mother a moment to breathe as I gasped for air. It was not that I wanted my siblings to have the best as I became a martyr, rather, I wanted peace in the house. Peace meant freedom from tension, freedom from eggshells. So I chose less and I told my eleven-year-old self that this is what being good looked like.

As I got older, I wanted to fit in everywhere. I wanted to fit in at home, at school, and inside my own skin. I wanted all of it without understanding that wanting everything at once comes with a cost. Somewhere along the way, I became exhausted, as my energy was limited. Survival required efficiency and a lot of energy.

I stopped caring about fitting in at school. Or at least I learned how to perform not caring about fitting in at school. This was not bravery. It was conservation. I redirected what little I had toward staying upright, toward “reading the room”, and toward becoming agreeable and invisible in equal measure. Endurance became my defining trait. I mistook it for identity and called it a personality.

The truth arrived later, quietly, the way truth tends to. I wanted to fit in, but what I really wanted was to belong. Belonging did not ask for performance. It did not require erasure to keep others comfortable. It allowed me to stay. I never had that in my first family.

Fitting in changes a person to earn acceptance. Belonging offers acceptance without negotiation. Fitting in hides real opinions. Belonging makes room for honesty with care. Fitting in depletes. Belonging restores. Fitting in is about how things appear. Belonging is about how things hold throughout the years.

I did not know any of this then. I only knew how to choose peace over cool, quiet over attention, and survival over style. The meaning of those choices took years to surface. Looking back now I see my erasure was not tenderness…it was twisted. But now, I finally belong and there is finally room for me to remain.

March 2026
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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 2 - Family as First Universe

Finders Keepers – Day 16

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Prompt – What role did you play in your family?

I was the baby in my family. My brother and sister were older than me by several years, old enough that by the time I reached preteen age, they were already gone. My brother went into the military. My sister married into the military. Apparently, the military was the family business. The house grew quieter. The orbit shifted.

As the baby, I watched. Silence felt safe. Observation felt necessary. While others reacted, I absorbed. While the room moved, I stayed still long enough to understand what was actually happening. Being the youngest meant I was present without authority. Decisions were made above my pay grade and explanations were optional at best. I learned to read tone before words and posture before intention. I noticed how laughter sometimes arrived too quickly, how stories and jokes could function like smoke, how playfulness could smooth over things no one wanted to face directly. I understood the role of distraction even when I refused to perform it. Instead of entertaining, I studied the moment the room needed to be entertained.

I became the observer because no one asked me to be anything else. I was small enough to disappear and quiet enough to be underestimated. That invisibility became access. I watched tension build and release. I watched who needed to be soothed and who needed to stay unaware. I noticed who carried the emotional weight and who benefited from keeping it unnamed. I learned that some roles exist to protect the system rather than the people inside it. Those patterns mattered to me even when naming them made others uncomfortable.

Somewhere in all that watching, I became the storyteller. Not the loud one. Not the funny one. Just the keeper of the stories. I held the version of events that existed before they were softened. I remembered what came before the joke and what never made it into the retelling. I learned that stories shift depending on who is listening and that truth is often traded for comfort without anyone admitting the exchange.

The storyteller role was lonely. It meant holding meaning without a place to set it down. It meant knowing things too early or too clearly. It meant understanding that telling the truth outright could destabilize a balance everyone depended on, even if that balance was fragile and false. So I learned patience. I learned restraint. I learned to let stories mature until they could be told without blowing the room apart. I learned that timing matters as much as honesty.

I did not soothe my family through story. I soothed myself by understanding the stories. I organized chaos into narrative, or at least I tried to. I tracked cause and effect. I stitched moments together into something coherent so I could survive them. That instinct followed me into adulthood, into classrooms, into leadership, into writing. I still sit quietly at first. I still watch how people move when they think no one is paying attention. I still tell stories not to entertain, but to reveal.

March 2026
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031