Finding Me

Your challenge, should you decide to accept it, is to learn how to be yourself. Be authentic.

There haven't been very many times in my life when I've been confident enough in myself to do this. I've spent so much of my life trying to be what others expected, and felt that I just didn't measure up, that I've lost my sense of true self. The search has been a difficult one.

Even now, when I'm single with no real responsibility for anyone else's well-being, I'm looking to others for my cues.

When I first moved back to Michigan, I had spent so many years alone-as in no real friendships or relationships with my husbands family or even my husband-that I was dying inside of loneliness. I thought I could find a way to be included, if I could just be what others were. That hasn't worked out so well.

I wanted to be part of the gang, included in things, conversations, plans. Yet, when I was included, it's like I wasn't really there, a peripheral part of the scene, an extra in a movie. Conversations would center around people and events that I had no knowledge of, so I couldn't participate.

My work schedule usually precluded me from being involved in holiday activites or parties, to the point that they(the people I'm surrounded by) don't even inform me of their plans anymore. The few times I've tried to make friends, asked someone to coffee or whatever, just haven't happened. I've just quit trying.

So, where do I go from here? If I don't fit in, and I have no one else's expectations to guide my behavior, what's left? Okay, I'm having trouble explaining this.

What does this have to do with being authentic? Well, I don't know who I'm supposed to be now.

This is one of those entries that I need to work on some more. I'm wearing out the backspace key, because things just aren't coming out to make much sense. I'm having a real problem expressing this in terms that don't just sound pathetic.

I will try this again at a later date, when I've scribbled and erased several pages of scattered thoughts into some sort of coherency. I just couldn't delete this-I wouldn't have an entry for today if I did.

~Namaste~