Importance of Being Yourself

A long time ago I think I became someone else. In fact I think I became so someone else that I no longer even recognised myself. I'm sure I was still there somewhere, but I was so busy being something for everyone else that the real me simply ceased to exist. And when those around me complained about the person I was, I simply bent and twisted myself yet again to reshape and be what they wanted me to be. I think that happened until one day I just bent and twisted once too often and finally snapped. That was when the reality of where I was really hit me and maybe even though it was a very long time coming, it happened at the right time to actually get my attention.

I realised even today some new things about myself that perhaps I had known or perhaps I had just not given much thought to, but even if I did know them, today they kind of occurred to me in a way that something that you didn't already know would occur to you. One of the main things I realised is that I am so very lucky to have the people and things I have in my life. And while I know I've said that before in posts to this blog, today had a slightly different slant on my perception of it. I realised today that there is such a greater depth to the relationships I form with people now and I think it's because I'm truly being me, truly being true to me and to my own heart and mind. And as much as anything else, I'm so grateful to have the confidence in myself to start to do that now.

I wish the confidence was always there, but it's not. There are still moments when I doubt not only myself, but the people around me and their motives. Old habits die hard I guess. Thankfully sometimes moments occur, things are said, that restore the faith in odd ways, odd in such a way as perhaps they weren't meant as reassurance, but it came very clearly across that way. Sometimes those odd moments can be even more reassuring. A look, a touch can sometimes express so much more than words of some rehearsed speech. We tell people that we love them often, but sometimes those words come so deeply from the heart that they take on even more meaning and sometimes those looks and touches reach your heart in a way words simply cannot convey.

I've had a lifetime of people pushing my buttons, so the last thing I want to do is to live my life that way now. And even though in those moments of doubt I fall into the same old trap of being tempted to do the twist and bend thing again... so far I've resisted and I'm re-educating myself to believe that if I'm enough it will be enough, and if I'm not then it wasn't meant to be to begin with.

Everything in life is dependant upon the choices you make for yourself. I didn't always make good life choices for me in the past. Am I making good choices now? Hell I don't know. I suppose only time will tell. Sometimes it isn't quite as simple as choosing between good and bad. Sometimes the choices you are faced with are impossible. Sometimes the choices aren't about what you can't live with - it's what you can't live without. At the end of the day - it's either enough or it's not - and there isn't anything else you can do about it.