What Does Trauma Look Like on a Resume?
What does trauma look like on a resume? It's 3:00 am and I'm hoping that the answers to my fears are somehow etched into the grooves of the ceiling.
If I stare hard enough, the flickering shadows seem somewhat calming, and I pretend to be less nervous about what's to come. I'm two days away from moving into my apartment and a week away from orientation.
I'm brimming with fear and anticipation. I'm nervous. What will it be like to be a student and not the facilitator? What should I wear without the requisite college/university nametag and a stack of business cards haphazardly stuffed in the crevice of my purse?
How will I introduce myself? Should I pepper my speech with Kristian™️-esque wit? Will my cohort respond better to nonchalant sarcasm or restrained profundity? Should I focus on making them laugh or impressing them with my knowledge of development theory?Thinking about describing myself is daunting. The more I stare at the ceiling, the more ashamed I feel.
I feel compelled to particularize my hurt and pain like a long list of credentials. I want to prove I belong with abridged stories of assault and -isms laced with examples of my survival. I don't know how to describe myself without the deep deficits. Who am I without my trauma?
Thinking about this brings me back to the week before my application deadlines, sobbing across from you in our hotel room. Draft upon draft of my personal statement lay askew on the bed, many pages smudged with foundation-stained fingerprints. The weight of this question- Who are you?- felt unbearable then. Who am I without my position title? What kind of woman am I without the restraints of misogyny? Was I interesting without the rich histories of my immigrant parents? What does it mean to be a woman of color without the familiar white/black dichotomy of racism?
It felt then, as it does now, ridiculous. How could I not know how to describe myself after twenty eight years of existing on this Earth? Yet the reality of it is, I'm lost sis. I feel conditioned to mold myself to fit census-like boxes, even when those categorical constraints don't exist for someone like me.
I wonder if others will assume I'm vapid at first glance of my perfectly drawn on eyebrows and wispy false lashes; it's a compulsion, to explain the my manicured beauty is a sturdy façade for the mangled trauma coursing through my veins. I want to regal them of my mistakes and failures, to humanize myself with imaginary badges of resilience and reflection.
Every application for postsecondary study has featured my hurt as a story of triumph. I have overcome. Survived. Thrived and grown. I painted vivid pictures of stereotypes and judgment for admission committees, presented tales of success despite the odds with a fictitious smile at interviews, and feigned restored confidence when colleagues assumed being a woman of color was the basis for my role as a diversity educator, that my passion for Queer and Trans inclusion stems from my own rainbow blood.
So who will I be in a few short weeks, when my hurt has always operated as my identity in my adult life?
The textured ceiling feels like my own tabula rasa, and I'm trying to let the rhythmic sound of the ceiling fan ebb away my fears. If we were together right now, I know what you'd say. I can even picture it- you sitting across from me with laptop and six chargers askew, looking at me quizzically. "Kristian, who do you want to be?"
This next chapter does not need to have the same preface as those before it; my trauma does not need to serve as my credentials. I don't think it belongs on my resume anymore.
