Finding Me

My journal is carried with me every day in my bag. It plays a huge part of my life. There are sometimes I will pull over on the side of the road and journal something, just because it seems significant enough that I don’t want to miss the opportunity to get the true, raw feelings down on the paper bound in leather. I went through a period where I lost my commitment a little bit. I quickly realized how important journaling is for me, and about three weeks ago, I become more committed to journaling every day again. Once again, it is tucked safely into my bag (well, one of my bags) every day. There is a pen attached so I can start writing at a moment’s notice. The past three weeks has been filled with strange situations, situations that give me anxiety, and situations that make me fearful. In the past, it was always a phone call to mom to talk about these situations. I could talk to her and she would always be able to decipher the issue – whatever weird, crazy, messed up situation I had gotten myself into – and the issue was back into the black and white I sometimes need to figure things out.  So, now my mom is not available to take on this duty for me, and I’ve found that journaling can sometimes help with this task. It’s become even more apparent the past month or so that I have made it a point to journal daily.

 

Today, I knew it would be a “multi-page” journal day from the time it started at 7am. Sometimes, you just get those feelings, but I was right. It was a four page kind of day. After I quickly got all of my thoughts down and into the “black and white” format I sometimes need, something hit me. It hit me hard – I have the mark to prove it. The pattern was so blatantly clear, I don’t know how I couldn’t have seen this before now. Now, I’m sure you all are dying to know what the pattern is…but I’m not going to share that. That’s something that I will work on on my own. However, this pattern really got me thinking, and the thinking is giving me excitement.

 

I’ve had some ups and downs over the past couple of years that have knocked me down a little. Those of you that are close to me are aware of what these are and just how much they have affected me, and continue to affect me. I’ve found my self-esteem has suffered, my faith in people, my ability to trust without leaving a brick wall up. I’ve tried really hard to build myself back up and find me again, but I think I was trying too hard to find the me that was before. I don’t think that me will ever exist again.

 REALIZATION #1 – The me that I was three years ago will never be me again. It’s impossible.Too much has changed.

 

As sad as this realization made me, it also made me really happy. This means I am free to be whatever kind of ‘’me” I want to be. I can like different music. I can like different TV shows. I can sleep on the other side of the bed. I can dance without people judging. I can sing the song that’s been in my heart for years. I can write poetry again. I can paint. I can play my musical instruments. I can be whatever I want to be. Now, I realize that I have tried this throughout the past two years and have been met with quite a bit of resistance. I guess people do not like change. They want things to be the same. But this wasn’t an option for me. There was no way that things could be the same. In the span of two years, I lost two of the most important people in my life to cancer. After seeing all that I had seen, there was no way I could go back to my naïve way of living life. It just wouldn’t work. Not only this, but I lost the love of my life during this period. That hurt a lot. But what hurt worse was the hit my self-esteem took when all this loss occurred, which made finding the new me harder.

 

REALIZATION #2 – As hard as it seems, I need to “get happy” and find things that make me happy in order for me to find the new me.

 

So, here it comes. You’ve been wondering this entire time, “Where is she going with this?” Right? You want to know what I am going to do…. Well, I have a great plan. It’s something that I will be blogging about on a regular basis to keep you all updated on my progress, but I’m not going to share it today. I need to put some things in motion for this to really work, so I will do that and day by day start living out this plan.

 

One thing I learned this week is that in order to build up someone’s self esteem, you have to give them four positives for every negative they encounter. How many negatives do you encounter in a day? Do you get four positives for each of these negatives? Somehow I think it is much harder to find four positives for each negative we are all faced with each day. My advice – go out and seek those positives. Create your own positives. Not only will you be finding your four positives you will be helping other’s find their four positives.

 

As easy as it would be to say – forget this. I have a reason to be angry/upset/frustrated/blah – I’m not going to. That’s not me. I want to get everything I possibly can out of this life and I want to take this chance and make the new me someone amazing.

 

“The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”