reflection
I write this only for myself… feel free to read/comment, but it’s not FOR anyone other than me…
Ok so I had an interesting evening last night… random, it didn’t go at all like I had thought it would, but it worked out probably for the best anyway… I did a little housework, cleaned here and there… and then I cleaned out my car… and then I did a little soul-listening and cleaning of my thoughts/feelings… I took a little drive and dropped off some baggage I’ve been carrying… I didn’t know it was that heavy until I dropped it off… I went to the very places that I picked them up to start with and dropped them right back off, where they belong. I apologized to myself… as weird as that sounds, it seemed so necessary… It’s weird - I was talking to someone who knew me from elementary school the other day… and I really don’t have a lot of childhood memories - they’re all kind of a blur… I just remember snip-its of things here and there… but I can remember some of how I thought back then, and my demeanor back then… and talking to my friend reminded me of that. I was more in tune with myself back then than I was all through high school and college… People generally should grow and change somewhat while growing up… and I know I did, in a lot of aspects, but I feel like I lost something along the way… on my mission to be the best daughter, best sister, best scholar… I lost my sense of me…. I can’t tack on those imaginary medals and use them to identify who I am at the core… I can’t look at all of what I’ve accomplished and say “this is who I am”… When I sit alone, with no one (yeah, not even the dogs), and with no phone, no computer, no music… when it’s just me in the quiet space… that is when I figure out who I was, have become, and want to be…
I was an outgoing person… I used to get in trouble for talking to much in class… I was a very laid back child… even tempered, chilled out for the most part… a loving child… had a soft heart, albeit easily broken, but sincere in everything I did or said… I was open with my thoughts… always questioning everything… how does this work, why is this the way it is, can these be done differently, what does this mean… inquisitive… I was humble.. I was patient… I was lazy… :) I was not phased by money or material things… I was at peace…
I have become close to something I’m not sure I quite like… I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think I’m still a good person and everything - there are just some things that I’m not so sure I intended on turning into… Somewhere between elementary school and junior high I realized I needed to put on an act… Back then I realized I was different, but I didn’t want anyone to know it… so I decided to cover it up. That is the first “choice” I made. I decided I would do all the good I possibly could and just set out to be what I _should_ be. So, I latched on to what came natural to me - academics. I breezed through everything… started just identifying myself as ‘the smart girl’ and that’s ‘who I was’… everything else, I just kinda took cues from other people… I needed to be more ‘girly’.. so I watched my sister (younger than me) - she was a girly girl - I could take my cues from her… I needed to date - so I found qualities that other people look for and developed my little checklist and went from there… if my friends or family didn’t like them for one reason or another, then out they went… I wasn’t really into them anyway, I just was finding people everyone else liked… isn’t that horrible? I did try to hang with some that I found interesting, but it just wasn’t there… you know what I’m talking about… I thought maybe it was my sampling… I just needed a larger sample size to choose from… hey stats people, doesn’t a larger sample size always help? Ha - not exactly. Oh but I tried… I got darned close and then, all of a sudden, I found someone that grabbed a hold of me… the me I thought I totally lost… after 10+ years… perfect! Right? Oh we know how this story goes though… perfect for me, not for ‘the rest of everyone’… I didn’t care… I was so thrilled to have found this person - one that could understand me and I was on the same level with… a connection that I always dreamed of in my Pisces fantasy ways but never thought truly existed… so I started being me again.. it was so nice…. But I couldn’t all the time - this was the kicker… I had to hide it - like a lot of us do. The family is not ok with things, nor will they probably ever be… so on the eggshells I began to walk - determined to maintain perfection in everyone else’s eyes and still be just plain ol’ me on the side… well ya can’t keep that up for long… it’ll wear you out. So this begins a new set of things that I loathe - pretending… I pretended I was into certain people when I wasn’t… I pretended that everything was perfect still with regard to my family but it wasn’t… I pretended I was completely happy when I wasn’t… so stress from family started to wear on me (I guess, only cuz I let it… but still, it did)… compounded with stress from school (now a senior getting ready to graduate and then go right into grad school)… which was another perfection thing… gotta be the best student, gotta maintain academic integrity, gotta get an A in this class, gotta do my research well, gotta get my thesis going, gotta gotta gotta…. Man, that was a rough semester… bliss continued in the relationship sector while me still maintaining the family issues… getting more stressed by the day… another thing I don’t like - those that are stressed out all the time. Eventually got a job so I could start saving for a house - even before I got done with school… a house? I wasn’t ready for a house… but it was the right thing to do for the money… ok, yeah, let’s get a house… right there - where did this money thing come from? I hate money - I guess I just like what it can provide… but even still… so onward I started with the material possessions… furniture, tv, parties, bars… yada yada yada… what the hell? Where was this coming from? So now I’m enjoying this person (sincerely) in a forbidden relationship and spending all my money on randomness (I did enjoy the vacations though… I’ll spend money on ‘time’ and ‘memories’), finishing a degree so I could make more money, and walking the line with my family who is so wrapped up in my ‘lifestyle’ that they don’t even know what I’m studying or writing my thesis over or what fun thing my dog did that day…. Blah! Where am I? Really, where the hell have I gone? And how do I come back? What do I do? Of course! I ignore it. I’m too caught up in ‘life’ to stop and think… well… that’s a lesson I don’t want to have to learn again… when you get too caught up in life to remember who you are… God has a way of fixing that… He takes your life and makes it where it isn’t driving you… whatever method necessary…
So this comes back to the baggage that I have now put back in its place… I went to the spot where I started looking to someone else for the answer… I went to the spot where I fell for the one I wanted just for me, no one else… I went to the building where I spent years trying to finish what I set out to do… I drove by the place where I poured myself out to my friend, in the total confused state that I was in that night… and I drove down the street where I once saw forever in one light and then saw it in another light… the street that held two and now just holds one.. and am still honestly at peace with that… A lot has happened to necessitate all of that baggage… some of it, some people know… some of it, I will take to my grave, I swear… I’m at least glad I can now see the purpose of what happened… the overall purpose… I mean I have thought about it a while and realize many lessons learned through my little upheaval, but I’ve finally gotten to the root cause of it all…
So now, what I want to become… notice how short the childhood memories are of what I was… and how lengthy the ‘what I am’ section is… There are so many things I can say that I _don’t_ want to be… or what I wish I could do over again differently… people always say ‘have no regrets - whatever happens makes you who you are’… I can’t help it though… Deep down I want to be that relaxed sweet person I was as a child… before I built up my walls… it takes years to tear those bad boys down… but only days to build them back up… I want to be able to sit alone and listen to myself and not be afraid of what I hear… I want to just exist… and not have other people’s expectations weighting me down… I want to go back to that beach and fly the kite again… I want to have that phone conversation again where my friend said “you see yourself in 10 years with X, so do I” and I want to take back whatever lame-ass thing I said and say “NO I DON’T! that’s just what other people want me to do”… I want to be open to my whole family… I want them to understand me… and the turmoil I’ve gone through just for their sake! I want to be myself… whoever that is… and not lose it again… and thus the necessity to apologize to myself.
At the risk of sounding schizophrenic, I had a heart-to heart with myself that was long overdue… I told myself it is ok to react to life the way I have and do.. it’s ok… and it’s ok to want.. even if you know you can’t have it… it doesn’t change the desire… regardless of the world around me, it doesn’t change where my heart is. And that is ok. Everything is actually ok… no more pretending that it is… it really is now.
Ok so I had an interesting evening last night… random, it didn’t go at all like I had thought it would, but it worked out probably for the best anyway… I did a little housework, cleaned here and there… and then I cleaned out my car… and then I did a little soul-listening and cleaning of my thoughts/feelings… I took a little drive and dropped off some baggage I’ve been carrying… I didn’t know it was that heavy until I dropped it off… I went to the very places that I picked them up to start with and dropped them right back off, where they belong. I apologized to myself… as weird as that sounds, it seemed so necessary… It’s weird - I was talking to someone who knew me from elementary school the other day… and I really don’t have a lot of childhood memories - they’re all kind of a blur… I just remember snip-its of things here and there… but I can remember some of how I thought back then, and my demeanor back then… and talking to my friend reminded me of that. I was more in tune with myself back then than I was all through high school and college… People generally should grow and change somewhat while growing up… and I know I did, in a lot of aspects, but I feel like I lost something along the way… on my mission to be the best daughter, best sister, best scholar… I lost my sense of me…. I can’t tack on those imaginary medals and use them to identify who I am at the core… I can’t look at all of what I’ve accomplished and say “this is who I am”… When I sit alone, with no one (yeah, not even the dogs), and with no phone, no computer, no music… when it’s just me in the quiet space… that is when I figure out who I was, have become, and want to be…
I was an outgoing person… I used to get in trouble for talking to much in class… I was a very laid back child… even tempered, chilled out for the most part… a loving child… had a soft heart, albeit easily broken, but sincere in everything I did or said… I was open with my thoughts… always questioning everything… how does this work, why is this the way it is, can these be done differently, what does this mean… inquisitive… I was humble.. I was patient… I was lazy… :) I was not phased by money or material things… I was at peace…
I have become close to something I’m not sure I quite like… I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think I’m still a good person and everything - there are just some things that I’m not so sure I intended on turning into… Somewhere between elementary school and junior high I realized I needed to put on an act… Back then I realized I was different, but I didn’t want anyone to know it… so I decided to cover it up. That is the first “choice” I made. I decided I would do all the good I possibly could and just set out to be what I _should_ be. So, I latched on to what came natural to me - academics. I breezed through everything… started just identifying myself as ‘the smart girl’ and that’s ‘who I was’… everything else, I just kinda took cues from other people… I needed to be more ‘girly’.. so I watched my sister (younger than me) - she was a girly girl - I could take my cues from her… I needed to date - so I found qualities that other people look for and developed my little checklist and went from there… if my friends or family didn’t like them for one reason or another, then out they went… I wasn’t really into them anyway, I just was finding people everyone else liked… isn’t that horrible? I did try to hang with some that I found interesting, but it just wasn’t there… you know what I’m talking about… I thought maybe it was my sampling… I just needed a larger sample size to choose from… hey stats people, doesn’t a larger sample size always help? Ha - not exactly. Oh but I tried… I got darned close and then, all of a sudden, I found someone that grabbed a hold of me… the me I thought I totally lost… after 10+ years… perfect! Right? Oh we know how this story goes though… perfect for me, not for ‘the rest of everyone’… I didn’t care… I was so thrilled to have found this person - one that could understand me and I was on the same level with… a connection that I always dreamed of in my Pisces fantasy ways but never thought truly existed… so I started being me again.. it was so nice…. But I couldn’t all the time - this was the kicker… I had to hide it - like a lot of us do. The family is not ok with things, nor will they probably ever be… so on the eggshells I began to walk - determined to maintain perfection in everyone else’s eyes and still be just plain ol’ me on the side… well ya can’t keep that up for long… it’ll wear you out. So this begins a new set of things that I loathe - pretending… I pretended I was into certain people when I wasn’t… I pretended that everything was perfect still with regard to my family but it wasn’t… I pretended I was completely happy when I wasn’t… so stress from family started to wear on me (I guess, only cuz I let it… but still, it did)… compounded with stress from school (now a senior getting ready to graduate and then go right into grad school)… which was another perfection thing… gotta be the best student, gotta maintain academic integrity, gotta get an A in this class, gotta do my research well, gotta get my thesis going, gotta gotta gotta…. Man, that was a rough semester… bliss continued in the relationship sector while me still maintaining the family issues… getting more stressed by the day… another thing I don’t like - those that are stressed out all the time. Eventually got a job so I could start saving for a house - even before I got done with school… a house? I wasn’t ready for a house… but it was the right thing to do for the money… ok, yeah, let’s get a house… right there - where did this money thing come from? I hate money - I guess I just like what it can provide… but even still… so onward I started with the material possessions… furniture, tv, parties, bars… yada yada yada… what the hell? Where was this coming from? So now I’m enjoying this person (sincerely) in a forbidden relationship and spending all my money on randomness (I did enjoy the vacations though… I’ll spend money on ‘time’ and ‘memories’), finishing a degree so I could make more money, and walking the line with my family who is so wrapped up in my ‘lifestyle’ that they don’t even know what I’m studying or writing my thesis over or what fun thing my dog did that day…. Blah! Where am I? Really, where the hell have I gone? And how do I come back? What do I do? Of course! I ignore it. I’m too caught up in ‘life’ to stop and think… well… that’s a lesson I don’t want to have to learn again… when you get too caught up in life to remember who you are… God has a way of fixing that… He takes your life and makes it where it isn’t driving you… whatever method necessary…
So this comes back to the baggage that I have now put back in its place… I went to the spot where I started looking to someone else for the answer… I went to the spot where I fell for the one I wanted just for me, no one else… I went to the building where I spent years trying to finish what I set out to do… I drove by the place where I poured myself out to my friend, in the total confused state that I was in that night… and I drove down the street where I once saw forever in one light and then saw it in another light… the street that held two and now just holds one.. and am still honestly at peace with that… A lot has happened to necessitate all of that baggage… some of it, some people know… some of it, I will take to my grave, I swear… I’m at least glad I can now see the purpose of what happened… the overall purpose… I mean I have thought about it a while and realize many lessons learned through my little upheaval, but I’ve finally gotten to the root cause of it all…
So now, what I want to become… notice how short the childhood memories are of what I was… and how lengthy the ‘what I am’ section is… There are so many things I can say that I _don’t_ want to be… or what I wish I could do over again differently… people always say ‘have no regrets - whatever happens makes you who you are’… I can’t help it though… Deep down I want to be that relaxed sweet person I was as a child… before I built up my walls… it takes years to tear those bad boys down… but only days to build them back up… I want to be able to sit alone and listen to myself and not be afraid of what I hear… I want to just exist… and not have other people’s expectations weighting me down… I want to go back to that beach and fly the kite again… I want to have that phone conversation again where my friend said “you see yourself in 10 years with X, so do I” and I want to take back whatever lame-ass thing I said and say “NO I DON’T! that’s just what other people want me to do”… I want to be open to my whole family… I want them to understand me… and the turmoil I’ve gone through just for their sake! I want to be myself… whoever that is… and not lose it again… and thus the necessity to apologize to myself.
At the risk of sounding schizophrenic, I had a heart-to heart with myself that was long overdue… I told myself it is ok to react to life the way I have and do.. it’s ok… and it’s ok to want.. even if you know you can’t have it… it doesn’t change the desire… regardless of the world around me, it doesn’t change where my heart is. And that is ok. Everything is actually ok… no more pretending that it is… it really is now.