Choosing Me

He sits across from me at the kitchen table, "You are still divorcing yourself from the past..."

Obviously!

You cannot take years and years of things and poof they disappear.

Well maybe you can, but I can't.

I don't live in the past, but there are still things I am trying to reconcile.

To learn from.

To forgive.

It's obvious I lack the grace to just let the pains inflicted where there should have been love just be.

I wouldn't trade the scars for today.

But there are things I need to understand in my heart.

There are things I need to caress until I am able to say okay, I will never know that answer.

More importantly I need to forgive myself.

I believe with everything in me that I am exactly where I should be and most of the time I live that way.

But there are moments that I think...yeah...this is all to good to be true. I don't deserve this. I shut off emotions only accepting the love I think I deserve. Sometimes that's not much.

I am more hurt by the fact that I allowed myself to become less than me. That instead of believing in myself, I believed what others thought and lived a life trying to be worthy of their love.

I was perfect, but never good enough.

Until I know longer knew who I was.

And the person in the mirror possessed someone who didn't belong.

A carbon copy of expectations met to please others.

So I started finding myself.

And the me I started becoming suffered even more than the "perfect me." 

I felt trapped.

Bitter.

Angry.

Unworthy.

My choice...continue living a life that others wanted me to have to please them even though there was no love, or choose me.

I chose me.

And I am still learning to love myself.

Discovering the wonderfully weird and adventurous me that existed before, again. 

Learning to accept love for who I am.

Knowing that even if I ever stand alone again, the person in the mirror will be me.

"Friend" or Friend

My closet is full of dark skeletons that I wish to go away, but don't.

 

Over the last several years I have tried to allow who I am to be who I was in life.

 

But the sad truth is that in doing this, I lost a lot.

 

People no longer associated with me.

 

They found fault in everything I did. 

 

They talked behind my back.

 

Truths became twisted to fit their narrow view of understanding.

 

As I was learning to love me, I found others no longer did.

 

My already fragmented trust was broken further.

 

Wasn't this process of being authentically me suppose to be freeing?

 

It was. Just not as I expected.

 

Looking back I realize I lost what held me back from being me.

 

Painful at the time, I now understand it was necessary.

 

Freeing was found in letting go.

 

This not only meant my feelings or emotions or roles, but of other people.

 

I did not choose to let anybody go. They left.

 

And perhaps that is what hurt the most. It wasn't my choice.

 

I felt abandoned and alone.

 

Until I realized that truth.

 

There was still a collection of people who loved me as I became me.

 

It was small, but their love was great. Real.

 

And I would rather have a handful of friends who love me authentically, than a world full of people who love me selfishly.