The real you, the real me.

Transitions can be tough.  Change can be grueling; it’s what our subconscious fights hardest against.  Yet every minute, every second, we are different people.  Every second we become older and everything we do and everyone we encounter in those moments affects who we are in some way. Casual relationships change us, show us something about ourselves.  Intimate relationships change us more, holding up a mirror for us to see our innermost selves, often forcing us to face things about us that we find unpleasant and that we haven’t seen or allowed ourselves to realize before. Even watching a movie or reading a book, feeling the emotions from the experience of what we see and hear, all makes us be something different, something changed.  Even the act of choosing one thing over another causes us to pick a fork in the road, a road that we keep traveling, leading us to more changes, all based on our initial decision of which way to go.

I’m older.  Maybe I’m wiser.  Most of all I’m facing who I really am.  I learned as a child to hide, to be who someone else wanted me to be, learned that being the real me wasn’t acceptable.  And going down that road of being someone less-than-authentic caused me to make other changes.  I picked men who didn’t encourage or nurture me.  I picked friends who didn’t care if they saw the real me or not, just wanted me to be someone who would listen to them, agree with them, do what they wanted.

I haven’t dated or sought an intimate relationship in a very long time.  Just didn’t feel the need or the drive or the desire.   I was never sure why but it didn’t seem like anything was missing. I have been occasionally lonely and sometimes sad, but I never felt the need to fill that void with a lover or partner. 

Now it seems to be making sense.  It’s like I’m coming out of a fog, coming into the light, finally seeing things as they really are.  Yes, I know that perception is reality, reality is different for each of us, but my reality lately tells me that all these years without an intimate connection has allowed me to learn who I am, to realize that I am a good person, loveable, worthy of happiness, deserving of happy moments.  It’s also made me realize that it’s OK and right, for me and maybe for many others, to weed out those in my life with whom we can’t be our authentic selves, be real, be honest…..and to nurture the relationships with those who truly care about us, listen and really hear what we are saying to them, encourage us to be our best, love us no matter what.

I’m certainly not sure what will happen next, how I will change, what choices I will make.  But I do know that I am learning to value me, to appreciate the uniqueness of who I am, love the qualities that make me special.  I truly believe that each of us is just like that, that there is no one just like us and who we are is a gift to the world.  We share the gift of who we are just by putting one foot in front of another, going about our daily lives, being friendly to clerks in stores, people we encounter at work, our families, and our friends.  The world and what we do in it, every day, makes us who we are and changes us constantly.  We, just by being ourselves, our unique selves, change the world, hopefully in ways that make others happier.  One of my favorite friends said recently that we are here to live and work and survive, but our biggest and best reason to be alive is to spread love, just by being our real selves.  Pretty simple.  And pretty magnificent.