Why I'm Me! Right?

Who do we all want to be?

When I was a little girl, whenever I was having a hard time, you know those times as a kid when you were being punished and hated your parents, I would fantasize. I would daydream about the kind of person that I wanted to be.

I wouldn't think about my life though, or how I would live it. Funny enough I would daydream about what other people would think of me. What would people say about me. I would fantasize that people would say, what a good mom! What a humanitarian! What a kind, loving, wonderful, caring, sweet, graceful... well you get the picture.

When I was a little girl I guess I was messed up or something, to view my future, and choose my future according to what other people would think. Funny enough in a way I still, make choices and base decisions, on what I think, other people will think.

I sometimes fantasize about what my children think about me, I think about what my friends think about me, and it is truly silly. We have all done that thing where we are faced with a decision and you think about what someone in your life would do if faced with the same choice; and then you choose the exact opposite. You think to yourself, I don't want to be like my Mom, or my Dad, or I remember old Aunt Bertha and I don't want to be like her. So you base your decisions on who you don't want to be rather than who it is you do want to be.

I have been thinking a lot about that in the last year or so. Seriously I want to be me. I don't always know who that is because I spend so much time focusing on who I don't want to be.

I don't want to be a loud, manipulative, guilt pushing mom. I don't want to be a nagging, tired, plaintive, hard-done-by wife. I don't want to be a loud, flippant employee. I know who I want to be and feel like I am nothing like that, so I think the next best thing is to just focus on not being all of the undesirable things.

I am missing though, there is so much missing. People don't get to know me. People don't ever get to make their own judgments about who I really am, because I don't present it. I give them what I think is the least disagreeable rather than just giving them me, and trusting, that maybe I am who I want to be, when I am not working so hard, to not be, those things which I detest.

 I have just come to realize that when I am sitting on the couch, pooped in the evening, and belching because I just wolfed down a huge bowl of cereal as a bedtime snack, scratching my butt every once in a while, it doesn't negate the wonderful things that really make me who I am.

When I kiss my kiddies at night, and think of the ones who are not with me everyday, and get teary eyed, that does not negate the strength I have, and I hope, I have taught to my children.

When I get angry at the world because I can't figure out how to get my printer to work, I am not evil, I am frustrated, and that doesn't negate the fact that I am concerned with the world. Or that I do help make it a better place. I try very hard to make a difference.

I am going to let the little things slide, I will just be who I am. I think the rest will come. I don't need to fantasize about what people think of me, or what they say about me.

I just need to be.