I am still me...

Okay, I know.... that statement would usually generate a reply of "DUH!", but stop and think about it... Who are you really? As humans generally (and women specifically), we always seem to be "trying to be" someone. As a child, I tried to be the daughter that I thought my parents wanted. I also spent most of my childhood wishing I were more than "just me": the pretty girl, the more popular kid, that athlete that was always graceful, the "super-smart" girl who was Valedictorian. In my own eyes, I never quite measured up when I compared myself to others. When faced with each of the decisions I have encountered in my life (joining the military, whether to marry at 20, and consequentially whether to divorce at 24, and so on), I tried to be an adult who could make up my own mind and choose my own path. Every decision, however, was in part driven by a desire to be "someone" in particular, usually a "someone" that I thought others expected me to be. In every single period of my life, I can pinpoint the place where I changed my image of who I wanted to be. Here, I wanted to be a better Soldier, there I was trying to be athletic (HA! lol!), for a while all I wanted to be was a college graduate, at one point I ran myself ragged trying to be the perfect wife, mother, student AND Soldier... how's THAT for wearing too many hats? This past year, for some reason (at the "ripe old age" of 36), I have come to a life-altering conclusion... regardless of what ideal I strive to achieve, what person's image I try to emulate, and what changes I undergo (or, more to the point, "attempt" to undergo) to 'be someone', I am still, and always will be... ME! I lost this fact for a while, and felt like an entirely different person, looking into my life from outside. Part of this blinding flash came from a book that I am reading about women struggling with difficult issues. Forgive me for sounding a bit "preachy" here, but this struck me as a point that should have been SO obvious, but - for me, anyway - was not for a long time. The author of the book is illustrating a point by describing an interchange between him and his daughter, and at the end of it, he states "But also like Laura, your Father will go with you down either path you choose. I actually didn't care which path Laura chose, because I knew that I could teach her and improve her character no matter which way she ran." Wow! Regardless of the mistakes in my life (and there have been plenty!), and the choices - both bad ones and good - that I have made, I am still me, and I have a life of which I can be proud. Sure, there are elements of it that I would not want broadcast on nation-wide TV, but we all have those. I no longer see those as the larger part of the whole. I simply see them as small pieces that make up the grand picture, and that picture looks much brighter and happier now that I know how to view it.