being me
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 at 12:37PM it’s about time to be me. i have lived so much of my life to other’s expectations and requirements i’m not sure who i am anymore. i remember knowing quite clearly at age 7. then we moved. everything changed. there was a whole new set of people to please (those whose donations helped support our family, and a bigger meeting and bigger school) and i felt a lot of pressure to perform. to be liked, to fit in, to not make anyone unhappy with me or disappointed in any way. i was trained to be certain things to certain people, so as not to offend anyone. somewhere in the process i lost sight of who i am, naked before god. it’s carried on to the point that i still have trouble, at 39, expressing an opinion. standing up for things. being decisive. i can control things to the point of strangulation, for myself and others, but i can’t just be. i honestly don’t know how.
i’ve been trying to write about things that make me angry (thanks mike), and succeeded in epxressing my feelings about the most horrific 7 weeks of my life on paper. that would be the 7 weeks before i got married, and it didn’t exactly turn into sweetness and light afterwards. i’m still a bit numb in spots. it felt somewhat good to write, but hard to look at and remember. i need to speak the truth about things that hurt me, which is different from pointing a judgemental finger and saying “you screwed me up”. the distinction is important to me.
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i feel rather amused/chagrinned that in my quest to keep this blog out of sight from search engines looking for my name, i forgot to take off the footer with my complete name in it. riiiiight. done now, but to what purpose i’m not sure. i don’t hide who i am, but don’t want random googlers to find me, like clients. i feel a wee bit more free.
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having family and friends for the holiday was great. it was encouraging, enjoyable, and distracting. i have these silly hopes that now that i’m confronted with myself again, i’ll find some big magic mirror that allows me to see underneath all the layers of crap i’ve armored myself with. there are no magic answers, just picking away when i see stuff or am poked at. the boys have watched insane numbers of videos, played computer games (yes both of them, fynn can operate the spiderman game passably and played some lego starwars when mike was here) and not gotten outside much.
i’m going to go running, for the first time in 5 days, and see if the crazy wind will blow some of the cobwebs out. it should help with the sugar cravings at the very least.
Reader Comments (2)
I can so relate. I've been struggling with being me for some time now. Even after I recognized it, it was so hard to tell what truly is me. If that makes sense.
I mean, even my url: takenlife... that says it all. Even today I struggled with it. I so desperately just needed me time. But in the back of my mind was that constant nagging of the people who need me.
Good Luck in your journey. :-)
thanks sasha :). you too! so hard to know where/when to draw the lines.