“The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.” - Jawaharlal Nehru

I have EVERYTHING.  A home, a loving husband, a beautiful healthy daughter and security.   My life from the outside is picture perfect.  I have never really wanted for much; I have lived such a charmed life.  And at one point in time that was enough, it was everything I had ever wanted.   And out of nowhere, one day, like a car in your blind spot that you don’t see coming, I woke up and that security or haven, no longer served me.  I felt lost and confused and I hadn’t a clue as to how to figure it all out.
Everything in my existence had become comfortably predictable and it was eating away at me from the inside out.   Days started to feel more like the movie Groundhogs Day with every chime of the alarm clock.  It was a viscous cycle, a merry go round of monotony and I wanted off!  I lost my zest, that bit of excitement that gets us out of bed in the morning.  It was GONE!  I was empty.  My life felt like complete stagnation!   Our lives have gotten all cluttered up with things that we think we “should” do; so much so that we can’t figure out what the things are that we were meant to do.   We go through life like zombies sometimes, busying ourselves with so many have to do things, that we forgot what it is like to do things because we want to.

All my life I have done everything I was supposed to.  I was a good kid. I graduated from high school. I always worked.  I never got in trouble with the law.  I always had rebellion on the inside but I never really rebelled in a big way.  I went away to college and studied hard.  I met my husband in college and he is the nicest guy you will ever meet.  He follows the letter of the law and does what you are supposed to do, much more than myself.  So, when I started dating him at age 19, I followed his lead.  We did everything society tells us you are supposed to.  We were together for five years before we got engaged.  We waited 2 years to get married.  We had a letter perfect wedding at my family church.  We moved to where we live now, to be close to family.  After 2 years of marriage we decided it was time to have a baby and bam, just like that, it came easy to us and we had our daughter.  At that same time we built a house.  I decided to be a stay at home mom with our daughter, figuring it was the most important thing I could do, in my life.  I put any thoughts or dreams for myself on the backburner and focused ALL of my attention on my family.  I breast fed for exactly one year.  Read to my daughter every night.  Made my own baby food and didn’t feed her sugar until she was 2.  I spent nearly every minute raising and teaching her.   I didn’t have the guilt that other mother’s that worked felt when leaving their kids every day.  I was very proud of being able to do that and consider myself blessed.  We’ve had flawless holidays and vacations with both sides of our families.  When my daughter entered school, I joined and became EXTREMELY active in everything in her school, becoming the PTA vice president and coaching all the sports she joined.  Then one day I woke up and forgot who I was. 

I read a quote by Jawaharlal Nehru that read, “The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.”  All of that cautiousness, this is what you are supposed to do stuff, had made me became discontent with my life.  Most of you reading this are saying to yourselves, get over it, boo hoo to you and I get that, I really do.  My life isn’t horrible by any stretch of the imagination.  I think I feel like this because somewhere along the way I forgot who I was and what I liked to do.  See, I feel like I have always taken a cautious approach, I followed what I thought was right and did everything I could to make it be that way.  Where in reality, who says what is right and wrong?   You have to find out what is right for you, not what is right for someone else.  The biggest mistake one can make is not being honest with yourself.  Looking in on my life from the outside, it looks like a Norman Rockwell painting but I’m not sure I want to be in that painting! 

Doing everything you are supposed to do creates an illusion that you shouldn’t make mistakes. I know that I have made some along the way but honestly it feels like I have never really made many large mistakes, some would say that is a blessing but I’m not sure that is this case.  Mistakes are what mold us into better human beings that make us realize our purpose and put us on the right track.  Not making mistakes keeps us safe.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t LOVE my family, my house or my life, of course I do, more than anything in the world.  I simply want to give myself permission to do things wrong or not do things that you maybe are “suppose to” do.  Because doing everything right and never making mistakes, is simply boring!  Perfection is boring. Life is supposed to messy.  In life you are supposed to make mistakes.  Please don’t misread me, I am not saying I am perfect, that is hardly the case.  I am only saying modeling your life the way you think it is supposed to be, a perfection, if you will, is in fact not living life to the fullest.  I have created and am SO VERY proud of my life but I’m starting to think I have missed something and I hope to find it in myself?

It is said that not until we are lost do we find ourselves.   It is so true, I think we have to completely become unraveled to start to find the real hard answers that we don’t necessarily want to know but must to better understand ourselves.  One of the longest journeys you will make is that one that takes us inward.   There is certainly no one size fits all or no quick fix to this journey.  On my inward reflection I have found that I am my own worst enemy.  We hold ourselves back and form patterns that keep us safe, which works just fine, UNTIL it just no longer works.  I’m starting to listen to my inside voice a little more these days and I’m starting to be honest with my feelings and emotions.  Quite honestly it’s not all sunshine and rainbows to say the least but it is necessary to figure it all out and take control of the life that I need.

The process of self-discovery isn’t an easy one.  Seems like you should just snap your fingers and bam, you do what makes you happy and instant fulfillment.  NOPE, not a chance in hell.  It’s the most uncomfortable process I have ever tried to conquer and I have been unsuccessful at it for a while.  It is simply petrifying!  There is so much confusion that serves as the catapult for questions.   These days my questions have questions. Unanswered questions glide in and out of my mind at all hours of the day and night.  I am constantly evaluating my life, NON STOP.  Why did I do this?  Will I like that?  It is constant confusion, why can’t I just be happy with what I have, has become a daily mantra for me.  All of this unfulfillment is changing who I am and making me feel painfully guilty for not appreciating all that I have. Finding yourself is like searching for a nickel in the ocean.  It’s out there somewhere but you have a lot of water to trudge though to find it.

So how do we figure out who we are or what we are here for?  Can we understand anything about a person from their social media profiles?   On Facebook, I have 249 “friends” if you will (less than 20 of them are real friends), my status is married, I have 148 sites that I like (half I’m not sure I remember liking), I was born 38 years ago, I have thousands of pictures of my family, friends, day to day doings and trips, I like a good inappropriate joke every now and again and I graduated from Buffalo State College.  Does that sum up my life, is that all that I am??  Not even close! 

So let me think about a few of the more recent job interviews I have been on, surely those questions will get to the core of who I am.  “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”  Umm, employed!! “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” I’m too awesome.   And my personal favorite, “if you were a Disney character which one would you be?”  Yes, this was an actual question *eye roll* at which time I realized I shouldn’t take that job and blurted out “GOOFY!”  I was stunned to find the interviewer was asking a follow up to my answer, “Why?”  I quickly answered in my sarcastic tone, “Isn’t it self- explanatory?”

Maybe a questionnaire like form, similar to a dating profile could help figure out who I am?   What makes you tick?  What is your body type?  Eye Color? Where are you employed? What are your favorite things? What do you do for fun?   Ooh, such deep questions.   Not sure that is where you will learn anything more about a person other than the surface dribble that everyone puts out for the world.  What I figured out after delving into all this useful information that we tell the world about us, is that it’s ALL COMPLETE BULLSHIT!  I love kittens and long walks on the beach.  I love to volunteer and spend time with my family.   No SHIT!  Those are all great answers to tell the public and the world at large because they are the nice answers, but what if you want the REAL answers for ourselves?  How do we get those answers?

These days I don’t have many answers, in fact I have been struggling to write a positive blog post for months and I’m still not sure this one is all the uplifting, but it is honest.  Moving forward I am going to stop being my own worst enemy, stop trying to create perfection and just live life, no matter how messy it gets.    I am certain, that I will be doing much more for me, in the coming months. I want to start loving my life again.  I know that if I start to find myself, the reason I’m here, that zest I’ve been looking for, I will be a much better mother and wife.  Someone just needs to tell that voice in my head that tells me I’m being selfish to shut the hell up!  We all need to stop lying to ourselves, listen to your true feelings and emotions and just do what feels good.  Stop listening to the information we put out into the public world and tap into the real you, the one that really makes you tick.  Allow yourself to feel whatever you need to feel no matter the consequences.  If you need to feel it, you should.  And lastly, on my horribly long journey of self-exploration, I’m finding out that life is less about finding yourself and more about creating what you want for yourself.  My wish for all of you reading this, long drawn out blog post, is for you to get out there and create the life you want for yourself, whatever it looks like, do it only for yourself, you can’t do it for anyone but you.   I’m not where I want to be yet, and I’m still not even sure what it will look like when I get there but I know that I’m done fighting the battle inside myself.  I’m feeling all of my emotions and feelings, good and bad and hopefully I will get the power back to feel ALIVE.  So here’s to throwing caution to the wind and making mistakes, I hope they bring me to where I need to be.  And when I finally get there, I hope to start my journey all over again, because I know I will always be a work in progress.