The Selfless Woman is a Ghost

Or... Stop saying "Borg" already!

Midlife is the plot twist. Essays & guides for women reclaiming their identity, creativity, and agency. The structure of fiction is the structure of transformation, and we write through it together, one prompt at a time. Subs get FREE Heroine’s Guide.

“Every time you speak to someone, you change to be just like them. You become a different person.”

Ouch.

Major Ouch.

But major truth bomb.

I caught the side-eye from my husband as I chatted with my friend in Italy, and rolled my eyes right back at him. He can never stay out of my conversations, and our house is too small to avoid his eavesdropping. This means I have to save my husband complaining for when he’s out of the house (thank God I don’t need to do too much of it).

It was clear he had something to say, and when I was done with my Italian gossiping and hung up the phone, I turned to him.

“What?”

“Borg?” He said.

“What?” I said.

He has the habit of speaking a single word to me and expecting me to pluck the remainder of his intended thought right out of his mind (why do all men expect us to be psychic?).

“It’s not Borg. It’s Borgotaro (the town of our little home in the Italian mountains).” He said. “You never say, Borg.”

“Okay,” I said, probably scrunching up my face like a squirrel sniffing out a nut. “So?”

“Every time you speak to someone, you change to be just like them. You become a completely different person.”

Ouch.

Major Ouch.

But major truth bomb.

I received that sentence, and it settled into my gut and rolled around, stirring things up, including a lifetime of memories and a flash of uncomfortable understanding. My people-pleasing hadn’t just stopped at giving people what they wanted. I was actually becoming them.

And you know what happens when you become someone else? The you of you disappears. The person you are talking to gets a (flattering) reflection of themselves. They don’t see you, they don’t get any of you. They get exactly what you have turned into, which is not you; it’s them. Ugh.

Spend a lifetime doing this, and you get to midlife, your husband drops a truth bomb, and you realize that perhaps, in your effort to make people as comfortable as possible, because God forbid you upset anybody, you have ceased to exist.

You could call it selfless and giving, because let’s face it, that’s the intention behind people-pleasing (we were raised with the message pounded into our brains to be likeable, be helpful... be small). The problem is that throughout the entire first half of our lives, we have given ourselves away, one conversation at a time. Every time we modulated our tone, stifled out irritation, smiled away a backhanded compliment, adopted the language (Borg?), we lost a little bit of who we should have been in that moment. Which means that we have been people-pleasing everyone except the person who needed it, who needed us, the most...ourselves.

You’ve felt this, right? It goes way back.

Way back in High-School I started dating the most eligible senior boy and got adopted by the popular senior girls (I was a Junior).

“Why do you hang out with Maria?” One of them asked, pushing up the sleeves of her Izod polo to reveal the newest Swatch.

“Oh, I won’t anymore.” I said.

“Why don’t you shop at Limited?” Asked another at she wiped a smudge from her white Tretorns.

“Oh, I will now.” I said.

I was so desperate to please those goddesses (Not!) that I became someone else.

And later, in Corporate America, outside of a meeting room with stale cookies and bad coffee…

Middle-aged Corporate Bro. “Make sure you smile while presenting.”

I dutifully smiled.

Oh, how I regret not showing them the smart, ballsy chick I was, and then forcing them to deal with it.

And yet...

I’m still doing it. I’m still making myself into the person I think others want me to be, which means I am never fully myself.

Maybe not even who we want to be. Maybe that comes later. Maybe the first job is to figure out who we are under all those layers of the dregs of other people.

Ouch.

Major Ouch.

But major truth bomb.

So how do we do that?

Here’s the fear that lives under that question, because I think you have it too. It’s not really how do I find myself. It’s: what if, when I stop performing for everyone else, I look in the mirror and there’s no one there? What if we’ve been a reflection so long that there’s nothing original left to reflect?

I sat with that fear for a long time. I’m still sitting with it, honestly (which is probably why I’m writing this instead of doing something more comfortable, like watching MAFS Australia).

But here’s what I’ve come to: the fact that the question terrifies you is proof there’s someone in there worth finding. You wouldn’t grieve a self that never existed.

And here is the actual permission that nobody tells you is on the table:

You are allowed to want what you want.

Not what your parents wanted for you. Not what your best friend assumes you want. Not what would make your husband comfortable or your colleagues impressed or the popular girls finally approve of you.

What you actually want.

The you of you has been in there the whole time (quieter every year, maybe, but not gone). She’s been waiting in the lobby of your life, filling out the same form over and over, hoping that this time, you’ll finally call her name.

Consider this her summons.

JOURNAL PROMPT

Sit with this: Think about your last three conversations. In each one — who showed up? You, or the version of you they needed?

P.S. If you want to go deeper on this I have a Questbook/Workbook that might help.

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