Frozen Nowhere

I’ve been silent lately.

Not sure how to proceed with things, what to say, what to keep to myself. I remind myself, a personal mantra, that I have a right to keep things to myself until I am ready to let them go into the world. I have the right to my silences. I have the right to sit in contemplation. I have the right to make space my own.

The month’s theme seems to be creating my own space.  I have been working towards the internal and external aspects of making my life my OWN. I have been examining my clutter – physical objects, emotional baggage, social expectations, mental patterns, spiritual concepts – and trying to let go of the things that are holding me back from a more authentic life. It has been about taking stock and making plans and examining dreams and revising what the worldspace I have created for myself.

My life is about making ME happy. For years and years and years I have been led to believe that it was selfish of me to live my life to make me happy. No, I was put on this earth to serve a PURPOSE. That PURPOSE was intimately related to this amorphous god-type being in the sky. The messages I got were that I was to grow up to complete school, get a husband, have kids, be a housewife, mother, keep a house, cook, clean… and likely work full time outside of the house on top of it all. I was to give up the “foolish” things that I loved that wouldn’t fit into the world I was being told to want — I was supposed to WANT a man who could “take care of me”, 2 kids, to spend all day being someone’s assistant and all night taking care of my family… I wasn’t supposed to work on MYSELF because the message that I got was that I wasn’t as important as the roles I was to play.

I WAS MISERABLE.

And I don’t want to be that way anymore.

Yes, the roles I play are important, but they aren’t more important than me being HAPPY. It is important to be a good parent, but can a miserably unhappy or tuned out parent be a truly GOOD parent? Yes, its great to be a good employee, but how productive am I when I am unhappy at work? What kind of friend am I if I am depressed or stressed or worried or if I simply do not know how I feel about things?

I am still unpacking the contents of my soul, looking at the things that make me happy.  It’s a personal process, not really one that is easily shared. I pull something out… examine it, try it on for size, adjust it, and move around looking at how it fits me – not only the ME I am now but the ME I am becoming the ME I want to become – and I don’t really WANT to be influenced by another’s perception of what is right for ME no matter how much they care about me.  It’s been slow going mostly because I haven’t had enough pieces of time to spend alone – sometimes I have the kids, sometimes I have social obligations, sometimes I have family obligations, sometimes friends want time, sometimes I don’t feel ready – and so I have been putting things off.

And so I am going through the focus on me, rather than focusing on what makes someone else (whether that someone else is theEx, the kids, a friend, a man, family, work… ) happy.

It’s hard to go against my internal grain, though and it has been a process of one step forward and 2 steps back.

In January I decided to make changes and live for myself.  I had made a huge, TERRIFYING, set of leaps to change my life. I paid off debt and got a mortgage for my own home.  At the same time I became single, which also helped me focus more on my finances (I no longer hosted extra people in my home every weekend, I no longer had to make long distance phone calls, I no longer had to have a fancy cable package, I no longer bought movies). I took the opportunity to try and change some of the situation that had made me miserable, I started deciding how to make my life the way I wanted, not the way someone else wanted for me.

I’m sticking to it. Even with things changing (aren’t they always?) I am standing firm on making my life and my home MINE… its an affirmation of what I want, and my promise to myself to discover what it is that I want for me.  

It’s NOT selfish to make your life YOURS… and to follow your dreams.