All I'm Ever Going To Be Is ME

I'm reaching out to my ears because there are many days when I feel I have no voice. Perhaps if I have to read my thoughts out loud to myself, there is some reassurance that I will be heard by one...even if I am the only one.

It's easy to forget how much we hold inside until the dam breaks. I shock myself sometimes about my own life experiences. I cried a lot when I was younger. Mostly in my teenage years, because what I thought was a healthy relationship actually turned out to be the first reason I needed a therapist. I buried those emotions so deep that they almost damaged the relationships that were most important to me. Funny how we aim at the wrong target when we finally figure out how to do things right. Or at least we think we do. 

I told a friend once that "when you're 16, all you have to call your own is your secrets." Lately, I wish I even had secrets of my own. I've spilled it all. I've been vulnerable, I've been broken, I've been loved, I've been hurt, I've climbed, I've fallen, I have triumphed, I have been defeated...I will overcome....but at what cost? I don't have all the answers. Sometimes I don't think I have any. 

In my heart I know I always try, but it never feels like enough. Those closest to me tell me that everyone feels that way and that everyone has problems. I believe them. But why does everyone else walk around ready for the next hurdle and I stumble with broken legs? I know I'm strong. I have to be...because everyone tells me so. I can't possibly put up that good of a front that the rest of my world sees me as some kind of hero when their lives seem unattainable. There are many things that I want to do in life, but so many more that I have to do. Maybe if I spent a little more time doing things I want to do, the weight might be lifted of what's required of me. 

3 words mean a lot to me...I love you. I don't always hear them when they're said to me and sometimes I have to repeat them in my head for them to register. Who? Who could possibly love someone that's so distracted and unsuccessful and irresponsible? Why do I struggle to say those words more often when I know how much they mean to me? I know my children love me. They're still at the age when they think I'm a superhero. Carrying 3 bags of groceries looks superhuman to them...I just see it as one less trip to the front door. Isn't that what life molds us into....adapting and overcoming...finding ways to just get things done...faster....easier? My brain consumes me daily.

I never stop thinking. I get ideas about how to do something new or better and I just can't shut it off. It's like the dream when you're driving in circles passing the same sign over and over again until you finally turn off to see what the sign says. I don't get anywhere. I can't move forward. I can't function. It haunts me. The idea is fun to come up with, but until it's completed I only see it as an uncompleted task that distracts from the things I really need to do. I explain it to those that matter and they see it as determination and stubbornness. I see it as a curse. I thought I finally found a way to overcome it. I set the time aside...and do it.

But that coping method has been challenged lately and it's wrecking my whole existence. Why doesn't anyone understand that this is killing me inside. A flame needs to be tended to and they are blowing mine out. If I am the person that they love and care about, then what is it that they care about if they are willing to crush the fire that drives me to be me? How do you become someone new that others want you to be when you're dying inside? It's a good feeling to love someone so much it hurts, but for someone you love to hurt you is a pain that deserves no words.

I know that every time I fell, I rose. Not always right away, but in time. I took the damage and I grew. I know that's what I need to do. I hope I'm done falling, because I am ready to grow. I have to tell myself that everything is going to be okay, because it has to be. There's no alternative. The only alternative to failure is being someone else, and I know I never can be. I'm me.