Finding Me

I was angry with the established authority figures that had paraded through my life. I trusted and depended on them to tell me truths, not sell me on illusions. How was I to become a reasonably functioning person if all the adults that assumed the responsibility for shaping my life fed me a constant diet of miss-information and outright lies? Shame on you; look at me. See, this is what you have created, someone just like you. I modeled your behaviors. I accepted your truths as my own. I questioned not. I pursued your dreams. I became you.

Who am I? I really wanted to know. After years of mimicking the behavior of others, finding me became my priority. This journey has become an endless search for the woman in the mirror. Eager to undo much of what had become me, I unrealistically rushed in where a saner individual would not tread. My discoveries fascinated me. And on many occasions I was saddened by what by what I observed and learned about myself. There were times when the fear of knowing delayed my journey. How much unvarnished truths can one stand? I soon realized that small doses of truths were much easier to swallow. So I made some adjustments by reframing my inward search. I began t tale smaller steps and eliminated those huge leaps into the unknown. This practice was a more tolerable feeding pace.

The inner woman that held all the answers was a formidable foe. She did not give up vital information easily. And when she did, there was no holding back on details. I quickly learned to approach her with gentle understanding and caution, if I wanted to know about myself, and I did. Stark naked truth is brutal on the delicate psyche of the disillusioned. I realized that too much too soon and the game would tilt. I didn’t want to abandon the expedition before I had uncovered the real me. You feel me on this?

What had I really learned from self-exploration? Let me say this first. Perhaps my initial statement was a bit harsh. After all, one can only teach what one knows. And it has become painfully obvious to me that all the adults are not individual thinkers … okay. They too were products of miss-information and lies. And not everything I was given – shown – and learned at their feet was bogus. Some truths were universally sound laws and a few of their dreams had value and became keepers.

The woman in the mirror reminded me that prior to my learning curves and growth spurts, as an adult, I brought forth into the lives of my offspring’s some of the same fruit that was given me. So the blame game had to go. And I agreed with my core self. Once I knew better, I did better. That kind of made up for some of the, oops and my bad’s along the way. You might say it evened out the playing field for them and me in a funny kind of way.

From where I sit, right in the thick of things, the real me is not better than or less than the counterfeit me. We are both imperfect. But, what I am dealing with now is genuine, my authentic self. That is the main thing to note and to remember. Now that I know what I’m working with and have a better conception of where I want to go, I get to decide how I want my life to flow based on my unique self and not a facsimile of another. And this is how it ought to be. Ain’t nothing like the real thing!