What Was I Made For?

 

I've seen the Barbie movie twice already. Both times have left me emotional because so much of me relates to its messages. For all the times I've been taught to look for deeper meaning in the things around me, I'm thankful that it has helped me to grasp some of the depth portrayed in this movie. There have been many wonderful commentaries on the movie and its messages, so I'm not going to go into that. Instead, I'm going to share why one song from the movie is so touching to me. 

I keep listening to the song “What was I made for?” from the Barbie movie. It resonates so deeply with me, and hits me on multiple levels. The most powerful is the thought that I really don’t even know who I am or what I was made for. I always thought I had to be something for everyone else: wife, mother, friend, daughter, church member, Christian, etc. and now I’m realizing that none of those are who I am. To fit into each of those roles I’ve had to squeeze myself into tiny boxes that forced me into an unnatural shape and kept me tightly contained. I had to shut down and deny parts of myself in order to be what everyone else expected or needed me to be. I couldn’t be angry, assertive, loud, or outspoken. I had to stay small, quiet, agreeable, and “nice.” The line, “I don’t know how to feel, but someday, I might” hits like a ton of bricks. I don’t know how to feel. I don’t even know HOW to feel most of the time. It’s such a heavy and foreign process for me to learn how to feel again. I have to stop and think about where I feel my emotions in my body, to give them a name and acknowledge them. For so much of my life I’ve had to ignore, push away, and dissociate from my emotions that now I’m entering a whole new world that is alien to me. I feel more alive, even with so much more sadness, grief, and anger. I wasn’t wrong to have “negative” emotions- I was just human.

Another line says, “Looked so alive, turns out I’m not real; Just something you paid for; What was I made for?” This makes me think of how the church groomed me to be something fake: girls are expected to be nice, sweet, innocent, happy, willing to sacrifice themselves. Put on a smile and serve others. Look the part of the happy Mormon girl. That was unhealthy and unreal. I could be all of those things, but those weren’t all I was or all I should have been. There were also the parts of me that needed to be heard, seen, and understood. There were parts that were angry, rebellious, sassy, and even mean sometimes. By denying those parts, I left half of myself behind. My whole self is a mix of all of the emotions, all of which are valid and necessary to a complete human experience. Then I was made to feel that I was never going to be “good enough” or worthy on my own. I needed a Savior to “pay” for me. And if I needed to be bought, what was I made for? Was I only here to worship my Savior? Was I only supposed to be a wife and mother? Was I supposed to be a plaything for the men in my life? An ornamental feature to make someone else’s life more pleasant? A useful member of the church and society? I wasn’t encouraged to get more schooling, to pursue a career, or even to have a solid sense of self before getting into a marriage. As a teenager I couldn’t live up to the purity culture, moral standards, or my need for physical affection (a poor substitute for the affection I was missing at home), and so I became broken, dirty, a sinner in the church’s eyes. I had to be paid for over and over and over. I could never belong to myself or acknowledge my value without being made to feel that I was a heretic, a sinner, an apostate. I accepted their label of "bad" and tried to change to fit their definition of "good." With each sin or transgression I put myself up for sale, trying to get Jesus to pay enough to save me from myself, hoping that His grace could make me worthy of love and acceptance. My salvation was being brokered through a church whose demands were far more than Jesus ever asked of me, whose ready-made answers to each of life's major questions told me what they thought I was made for, but they forgot to mention that my purpose was to love, to be loved, to experience being a whole human, and to connect with others.

At the end of the song it says, “Think I forgot how to be happy; Something I’m not, but something I can be; Something I wait for; Something I’m made for.” Now that I’m reconnecting with the parts of myself that have been buried and ignored for decades, I’m not so happy any more. I can’t just dissociate and pretend that my past trauma didn’t happen, that it’s not still affecting me today. I could easily sing along to the start of the song, “I used to float, now I just fall down; I used to know but I’m not sure now.” I’m not as cheerful and smiley as I used to be. I'm not floating above myself any more. I have so much more grief and sorrow now. I thought I had all the answers, but when my belief system crumbled, I awoke to how little I really do know. There’s plenty that I believe, but I can no longer summon the arrogance to say that I know much of anything outside of myself (and even much of that is ambiguous.) I’m learning to be comfortable with the unknown, to embrace the mystery and the uncertainty of life. I have hope that someday I will be able to be happy again, but in a more authentic and healthy way. After all, I think that THAT is what I was made for. I was made to be happy, to be filled with love and light and energy. Beyond that, I’m still not sure who I am, but I’m working to figure it out. And for now I’m just learning to be in the moment, to be alive and to feel. To be human.