I Have Started To Dislike It

She noticed the change of tense in her own head, which is a strange way to notice anything, and it stopped her.

For years the sentence had been: I am the one who does not quite fit here.

And a few weeks ago she caught a different sentence going past, unbidden, in the middle of an ordinary evening.

I wish I were not like this.

That is not the same sentence. She sat with that for a long time, because she is a person who notices words, and the difference between those two is the whole of what has happened to her over about nine years, and she had not been watching it happen.

The first sentence is a description of a position. It is a bit lonely and it is not an accusation.

The second one is about her, and it is not neutral, and it has a wish in it, and the wish is that a piece of her were different.

And what frightens her is not the loneliness, which she has managed for years and could manage for years more.

It is that she has started to be on the other side. Something in her has changed sides and joined the general opinion about the thing she is, and she did not authorize that and she does not know how to call it back.

She said out loud, on a walk: I have started to dislike it.

You know that sentence.

Maybe you have caught the same change of tense. Maybe you used to describe the thing about yourself with a shrug and you have noticed a different tone creeping in. Maybe you have started making the joke about it before somebody else does, which is the stage just after this one.

Nobody turned you against yourself. Nine years of not matching will do it on its own, gradually, without any hostility from anybody, and that is exactly why it is so hard to catch.

Where it came from

Here is the sentence in the psalm that people put on cards, and it is worth reading for its actual grammar rather than its warmth.

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.Psalm 139:14

I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Made. It is a manufacturing word. The whole psalm around it is about being formed, in secret, deliberately, by somebody paying attention: my substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret.

And the thing that does not match came out of the same workshop as the rest of you. It is not an error that got past inspection. There is no version of that psalm where some parts are His work and the awkward parts are something else.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made, and the part that does not match came out of the same workshop. That is what Psalm 139:14 claims about the whole of a person (Psalm 139:14), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a settled thing in somebody rather than a sentiment on a card, which is why a fact about manufacture can be handed to a woman on a walk who has started to dislike herself.

The stage you have moved into

Now let me name what has happened, because naming it takes some of its power.

You have not become vain or self indulgent or fragile. You have done something extremely common and extremely quiet, which is that after enough years of being the exception in a room, a person starts to see themselves from the room's side.

It is not that anybody in the room dislikes you. Most of them do not think about it at all.

It is that you have been standing next to a majority for nine years, and a majority is a strong signal, and eventually you began to read yourself the way you imagine you are being read.

You have not turned against yourself, and what happened was a drift rather than a decision. Scripture says be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2), and it is the Holy Spirit who does that renewing, which is a work done on a mind that has been quietly conformed by something without ever agreeing to it.

And this page will not tell you to celebrate it

Let me be plain, because the obvious move is available and it is not the one being made.

Nothing here tells you to be proud of the thing, to make it your identity, to lead with it, or to work up a feeling about it that you do not have.

And nothing here tells you to change it either, or that it should be surrendered so that you fit better, or that it should be defended so that others accommodate it.

You are not being handed a project about yourself in either direction. The word says let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind (Romans 14:5), and it is the Holy Spirit who does that persuading over time, which is why no page has ever fixed anybody's relationship with themselves in nine paragraphs.

The whole of what is being said is that the dislike arrived from somewhere and it did not come from God, and it can be handed back.