Letting go...

I think I am as close as I'll ever be to letting go...in a good way. For my entire life I have had all of these plans, all of these ideas of who I should be, and who I want to be. If life threw me a curveball, as inevitably tends to happen, I would lose my ever living mind and wallow in the "depths of despair" as Anne Shirley would say. I would abandon things I love, because it didn't seem to fit the mold of who I should be, and I would pursue things I had no interest in because I mistakenly thought that's who I wanted to be. I was always associating who I "am" with what I did, wore, read, and associated with. An eternal identity crisis. Sometimes, in my teens and early 20's, I would be so confused, and so desperate to find "me", that I would sit down with a pen and a pad of paper for hours on end, and just write down things that I loved, hated, and that I felt defined me as a person... somehow believing that by reading this list over and over, I would make the strange melange of loves, likes, interests, passions, secrets, and ideals that was me, be okay, and seem acceptable to the world and myself. It bothered me that I didn't fit in with any one group at school or at work. I was bits and pieces of every clique I hung out with, and nothing really felt right.

I have wanted to describe myself as many things, apply lots of labels to myself, some of them to serve the purpose of making me worthwhile, a commodity. Isn't it strange to try and describe yourself without using words that are labels. It seems nearly impossible to describe the essence of me without slapping them all across my forehead. It reminds me of a scene in Anger Management with Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson. Sandler's character is at an anger management group led by Nicholson, and when Jack asks Adam Sandler to describe himself to the group, Adam's character keeps refrencing his jobs, his likes, what he does, where he lives, etc, etc. Jack Nicholson's character aggravates Sandler by continually reminding him that those things don't describe HIM, as a person, Sandler keeps getting more and more flustered, because he can't seem to describe himself without applying all of these labels. It's all he knows, all that he can think of to reference himself, to describe who he is. I cannot tell you how long I felt like that. How can I describe myself without using words like, mom, photographer, wife, friend, daughter, employee, sister, student, artsy, young, bohemian, crafty, creative, etc. It seems so hard. To me it was like the answers to life lie in some far off, perfect combination of labels. Like, if I called myself a "young, trendy, creative, on-the-ball, bohemian, photographer, mom" then all would be right in the world, and people would love me, aspire to be me, or at least (and somedays at the most) just accept me. But in order to be those things, I found the need to abandon true pieces of who I am, and just leave them along the dirt path. Surely, a hip, young, photographer mom wouldn't have a penchant for collecting and wearing aprons, or secretly loving movies about the Old West, or occassionally voting conservative, or crying myself to sleep because I never feel good enough, or struggling with self worth, or letting my kids watch tv for 6 hours straight every now and then, just to get work done without nagging. I either felt the need to keep parts of who I was a secret, or just totally abandon them. And of course in turn, I felt even more conflicted about who I was, and seemed to fit in even less. Just a stupid, viscious cycle.

I feel blessed to have endured many of the things we have endured in recent years, blessed and cursed all at once. It's given me a huge wakeup call. The ability to realize that who I AM, can't and shouldn't be created and molded by my environment, my choices, my decisions, my friends, my hobbies, my loves, my career, etc. THOSE things will be molded and chosen and created because of who I am. I'm okay with the fact that while right now, I love to knit, and sew doll clothes, and read books about Italy, and avoid church, and laugh with my husband at rediculous movies, and cry in the laundry room when I miss my daughter, next year I may not be that person at all. I know I will be me. I have no deadline for self-discovery, no set of stringent rules, and no labels that give me worth. Just me.