Fight or Flight (or Love Yourself)

Before I get to rambling, let me set up what brought all these (possibly) incoherent thoughts on.

I think that's important.

I love my husband more than anyone, and I know that he loves me. In my life a lot of people have loved me, but he's the first that I knew loved me unconditionally, without a question. Despite this unfailing knowing, there are moments, even though we're married, that I worry that maybe he'll want to be with his ex again. Now, if you know me, and you know Vince, you might think that I'm nuts (maybe I am). But I can't shake that feeling every now and again. Despite him telling me over and over that I'm wrong, that he loves me, that he chose to be with me, and marry me, and spend forever with me, there's this irrational part of my brain that won't shut up.

Today, we ran into her twice. That should not be a big deal. Once we saw her, and just went somewhere else to avoid any awkwardness (and my potential weirdness). The second time, we were sitting in Starbucks (like usual), drinking our sugar-free mochas (we love our mochas), and she walked in.

Vince, who is just a true person, immediately begins thinking of ways to make me laugh. He jokes about breaking the window so we can run away. He laughs and squeezes my hand. He stays calm in the midst of what I see as a raging storm, and holds me in place. While he's sitting there, calm and smiling and loving, I'm shaking. My face feels hot, my ears are burning, my skin is tingling, my heart is hitting my sternum so hard I'm sure everyone in the cafe can hear it and see it. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking.

I was in fight or flight mode. No doubt.

He's holding my hand to reassure me and to be sweet. I'm holding his hand because, if I let go, I'll be blown away in the gale force winds that this storm (of my own creation) has just accosted me with. He's my anchor.

Vince goes out of his way to make me feel comfortable in the fifteen minutes we have before he goes on the floor to work. He makes faces, makes silly noises, gives me a kiss, tells me he loves me. And I sit there and smile at him, and shake, and think, I'm not good enough to keep him. He's going to leave me. At one point, I even said, "Please don't leave me." To his credit (because I'm clearly a crazy person), he just smiled and said, "You know that's never going to happen." Calm and sweet and just what I needed.


His ex was in the cafe for fifteen minutes, tops. It felt like hours. She didn't talk to us. She didn't walk near us. She avoided us just like we were avoiding her. Why was I freaking out?

Let's take it one step further. Even if she had come over to talk, or walked nearby. Why would I freak out? 

Do I trust my husband? Completely. 

Do I trust in our marriage? Completely. 

Do I, when I'm not in an overly-emotional, 

self-deprecating state, worry about these things? No.

So clearly, it goes much deeper.

Vince and I talked last night about my insecurities. I have a lot of insecurities. The way I look. The way I think. The way I talk. The way I dress. The talents I have, or don't have, or want but think I'll never get. You name it, I bet I'm insecure about some facet of it. 

When our was all said and done, he said, "I don't think you love yourself."

Man, that hit home. 

That struck a chord in me that I didn't know was there. Or, maybe I knew it was there, and have ignored it for years. I don't love myself. I don't like myself. I don't want to be me.

Except, there are sometimes I like me. I like me when I'm with Vince, and I feel comfortable in my own skin. I like me when he's encouraging me. I like me when he's building me up. But, only there. Never just based on a security within myself. There's something wrong with that. Not wrong with me, (which is what I would normally say, but I'm working on things, so I won't), but something wrong with that.

If I loved myself, I would know that Vince's love for me, Vince's dedication to our marriage, isn't going to be compromised by seeing an ex-girlfriend, or a pretty girl, or an alien, or anything. If I loved myself, I wouldn't feel like every time I go to hold his hand, or hug him, and he's doing something else, that he's rejecting me. (Yeah, I'm that girl.) If I loved myself, I wouldn't feel like everything I do isn't good enough. I would feel good enough if I liked myself. If I loved myself.

If I loved myself, if I had confidence in myself, I wouldn't have reacted that way today. Would it have been a little bit awkward? Of course. When things from your past are presented to you suddenly, without warning, it's awkward. But would it have been that heart-pounding, skin-tingling, shaking, red-faced freak out? No. Because that's not a rational reaction. It's not a wrong reaction (as my brother told me when I asked his advice), but it's not a rational one, either. I wouldn't have immediately thought Vince was going to leave me (which, in retrospect, is ridiculous).

I used to think self-love was selfish. That I should sacrifice everything I could, that I should find every fault I have and poke at it like a bruise, that I should never be proud of my strengths...and I'm not saying now that those things are wrong, but I'm revisiting those ideas, and modifying them.

It's important to love ourselves. 

God created us. God created me. He created me so that I would be five-five, so that I would have blue eyes that weren't quite even, so that I would want to write, so that I could love people, and make good and bad choices. He didn't mess up when he made me. If God loved me enough to create me just the way that he did, why would I hate me?

It's important to find our faults. 

It's equally important not to beat ourselves up about those faults. Should we work to better ourselves? Yes. I think we should work to better ourselves every day (and in so doing, avoid picking at other people, but that's a different blog for a different day), but we should do so in a way that is constructive, and not detrimental. I tend to pick out a flaw, and kick myself over and over and over again until I'm a bloody pile on the floor. Not healthy. Not good. We should pick out a flaw (let's say we talk about people behind their backs, without reason, frequently), and keep that flaw in mind. Instead of hating yourself for not being perfect, we should just work, a little at a time, to do better. Simple as that.

It's important not to be prideful. 

It's also important to recognize when you do something well, and not be afraid to claim it. I'm a pretty good cook. I can write a pretty good story. I'm good at craft things. It shouldn't be hard to say those things, but for me it is. It's hard to admit when I do something well. (I'm always so scared that I'll admit, "I'm good at this!" and someone will think that that's so ridiculous, that they'll point out how wrong I am.) It's healthy to be aware of your strengths, just like it's healthy to work on your weaknesses. Being prideful is something different. Pride leads us to hurt others with that strength. It's important not to be prideful, and it's equally important to admit when you do something right.

As far as I know, everyone except me knows these things. All of the insecurities bubbling within me are screaming for me to say, "but I understand why you'd think I wasn't good at things! I understand if you agree that I should be scared that Vince will leave me because I'm not good enough. I understand if you think I'm not good enough!" I only say this now so that you understand where I'm coming from more thoroughly. These are the things I'm battling. These are the unhealthy things that aren't real. These are the things born from my self-loathing, and the things that have to go.

I wish I could take credit for all of the positive stuff in here. But I can't. Vince has told me these things over, and over, and over again. He tells me every day that he loves me, and that he wishes I could love me like he does. He tells me that I do have strengths, and he tells me that he loves my weaknesses, except when those weaknesses hurt me. He hates that I don't love myself. And if it weren't for him, I wouldn't be writing this. I wouldn't be thinking this. I wouldn't be taking even this small step towards loving me.

He loves me hard enough to protect me from the storm I created today, all because of a fragment from his past. He loves me hard enough to break down my innumerable insecurities into one basic idea that, even though it's huge, doesn't overwhelm me. It's an idea I can think about and digest and work on. He loves me hard enough to tell me when I'm being silly, and to pull me back onto the calm shore where he's standing. And the way that he loves me is just a small reflection of how God loves me. The way God loves every single person on this planet. 

I don't want that fight or flight reaction to happen every time a big insecurity attacks, which is more often than I want to admit. I want to love myself so that, when the potential for that heart-pounding, shaking storm is there, I can hold onto Vince because I'm right there in the calm with him, and not because I have to or I'll be blown away.

Selfish

I want to be less selfish.
I want to quit thinking negatively about people,
especially the people who've never done anything to wrong me,
and especially the people who have.
I want to give more.
I want to love more.
I want to be a better person.
I want to go out of my way for others,
and not expect anything in return.
I don't want to want anything in return.
I don't want to want anything.

The implication here, is that I am selfish. I think negatively. I don't give, or love, enough. I expect things. I want things. That's the implication of what I said, anyway.

I don't say all of this so that someone who loves me might say, "you're not a bad person." Even though I appreciate when people try to build me up, those people that love, those people that try to make me see the good in me instead of the bad. I appreciate those people, and those things they say, deeply. But, I don't say all this in order to get that reaction. On the contrary.

I say all of this as a type of confession. I'm confessing to these wrongs in my life that I perpetuate day, after day, after day. I allow them to keep existing, because maybe I'm the only person who knows they exist. Or maybe everyone sees these things in me, and maybe everyone is just too kind, or too scared, to point them out.

I'm sorry if I've hurt you. If I've not loved you enough. If I've wronged you. If I've done things for you to get things from you. If I've not loved you enough.

I want to be less selfish, and this confession, will hopefully be my first step towards that.

The Facebook Phenomenon

Why is it that Facebook plays such a huge role in our lives?

That question has been rolling around in my head for weeks now. I've talked to people about it, in different settings, and still have no concrete answer.

I ask the question, because even though I don't want it to be a big thing to me, it is. I really would rather not care what's going on in cyberspace, but it effects me deeply. And that disturbs me. If I could come up with a reason explaining to myself why it matters so much, maybe I wouldn't be so bothered.

So let's talk about it.

Facebook is a social networking site. We all know this. It's a place where we can share information, photos, ideas, and feelings with people we might never get to see or talk to otherwise. I posted photos of my wedding so that my family and friends who were unable to make it could look at them. I recently shared a music video that my brother's band made. Without Facebook, it would have been much much harder to get the word out. I found out that my cousin is having twins, a boy and a girl, almost as soon as she found out. I've gotten to see my cousins' children grow up! These things are wonderful features that Facebook allows.

However, I've noticed in the last few years that Facebook has also become a place for people to establish themselves. What I mean by that is, people go on Facebook to show people who they are. We create profiles stating our likes and dislikes. We take photos to establish our style for the world. We state our relationship with people so that it's clear to everyone just what we mean to so-and-so. And the real kicker is, none of this information has to be true, yet, we treat it as if it were vital.

"It's not official until it's Facebook official."

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that. Before I got married, my husband and I dated for several months. It wasn't on Facebook, and people would ask over and over why it wasn't. After a while, that starts to wear on you. And for what? Why should it matter if it's represented online. Everyone knew we were together. We knew we were together. Why does Facebook get to dictate reality?

Have you ever been on Facebook, seen a nasty status, known it was directed toward you, and had a bad day because of it? Would the person who posted that status have said those words to you if you'd been face to face? Doubtful. Facebook has evolved from a great place to post digital information to share with people far away, into a place where people can bully and pry without having any repercussions.

The saddest part is, after all of this, even though I really think that what Facebook has become, is more often hurtful than not, I still check it all the time. I get excited when someone comments on something. Likes something. Posts something for me. It's a dependency on this site for human interaction. It fulfills some base need that I seem to have to be reassured that the life I'm living is okay. That the way I look is okay. That my ideas and beliefs are okay. I know how silly that sounds, but whether it's silly or not, it's the way things have become, at least in my life. I can't speak for anyone else.

I posted this blog because I want to hear ideas. I want to know what people think about Facebook, about Twitter, Instagram, Google+, texting, Klout, all of those sites where we go to communicate, to have social interaction instead of going to a store and talking to people, or picking up a phone and calling them. We hide behind screens with text and photos. What do you think about all this? Maybe, if you're confused too, we can help each other understand.

Chop Off the Monster's Head

Jealousy is an ugly thing. 

It's one of those things that creeps up on you, unawares, and yanks your feet out from under you. Then, when you're on your face, it comes and stomps on all of your fingers. It punches you, and kicks you, and insists that you hate yourself. It's a monster that you don't see coming until it's already too late.

It's weird how it works. 

Jealousy works on your soul in a way that makes you feel like less. Makes you feel inadequate, not good enough. Whatever or whoever you're jealous of becomes this untouchable things that you put yourself up against, and in the end, you always fall short. You aren't tall enough, aren't short enough, aren't pretty enough, aren't skinny enough, aren't funny enough, aren't serious enough, aren't enough. Never enough.

It's horrible,

and it will kill you, if you let it.

I have a real problem with jealousy. I find myself getting jealous of so many things. I feel silly afterward, a lot of the time, but I also still feel jealous. Whether it's of something someone has, or the way someone looks, or the amount of time I get to talk in a conversation...I get jealous for lots and lots and lots of reasons. My jealousy is like a living thing that I can't control...that sometimes controls me.

Jealousy doesn't make sense. 

One minute, you might be completely okay, happy, laughing, calm. And the next, after that stressor is introduced, you might be sad, angry, tense, scared.


In my experience, the stressor is generally self-induced. Meaning, it's something that is all in  your mind...it's born there, nourished in the soil of your insecurities, and grown into an all-consuming monster. The real kicker is, it's so ingrained as a part of us, we become blinded to the fact that only we can chop off its head.


I see this happening in my life almost daily. I had a talk with Vince, my husband, the other day. I expressed to him in oh-so-eloquent terms (that was sarcasm) that I was jealous of the way another woman looked. It wasn't relevant to anything that was happening at that moment. I just happened to look at a picture of this person, and blurt it out. "I'm jealous of Susan." (Her name isn't really Susan, in case anyone was wondering.) He asked me why, and I told him, "Because she's prettier than me." He asked what I meant by that. He asked question after question...until I realized I didn't have a real answer. I had my own opinion about what pretty was, coupled with, and based on, what the media told me what pretty was, and compounded by my deep standing insecurities about my own appearance. My jealousy, which was a very real feeling that ran with very strong emotions, was based on me--my perception of reality, and of myself.


Vince made me think about what it was I was feeling. He made me break it down so that I had to look at it in pieces. I had to push aside, or at least try to push aside, the emotions that went along with my jealousy. He forced into the light that my jealousy was stemming from my brain, from facts that weren't facts at all, but my own perception, and the only way to counteract that, was to realize that what I was believing wasn't truth, but opinion, and that that opinion was based on unreality.

He made me see that I needed to chop off the monster's head.

But I grew this monster. I fostered it. I fed it. I raised it from infancy. It was as much a part of me as my arms and legs. But it wasn't a healthy limb. If I left it there, it would rot, and eventually, it would kill me.


I don't mean to say that, because I now realize my jealousy's foundation is unstable that I can fix it all at once. That would be silly. Rather, now that I can see my jealousy for what it is, I can begin to deal with it, one insane episode at a time.


I feel myself start to get jealous.
I feel my heart start to pound,
my cheeks go red,
the tears start to well up in my eyes,
and then I think...

is this real?

Or is it all in my head?

Why do I feel this way?

Why?

And that doesn't make it go away, but that makes it manageable. That makes the monster a little bit less scary. And when the monster is less scary, you can start to fight back. After a while, that monster that's tangled itself up in your mind will be small enough to manage, and then you can chop off its head.

It won't be something that changes in a day, or a week, but I know it'll happen. As long as we remember what's real, and what isn't. As long as we stop to think about why we feel a certain way, and what we're basing it on. As long as we remember to search for truth, and to ignore the things that influence us with falsehoods. As long as we remember all of this, that monster, Jealousy, won't have any place in us. And that will be a beautiful, beautiful thing.

This isn't normal.

It starts in your stomach, like the bile is boiling and spreading into your extremities until you're tingly and hot all over. It makes your eyes well and water even if you don't feel like crying. After that's over, you might hunch your shoulders and cover your stomach with your arms, or try and cover your arms with your hands, but your hand are too small, so you just fidget, uncomfortable in your own skin.

This isn't normal.

This isn't good.

But, this is, in my experience as a 26-year-old woman, 

what it feels like to be really, really insecure.

Maybe this is just my experience of it. Maybe no one else on earth feels this way. But it can't hurt to throw it out there.


Whenever I see a girl who is thinner than me, has nicer skin, better hair, a prettier face, a more attractive body, some form of this process begins for me. It starts small, of course, maybe I just become overly aware of the part of my body that this girl's is better than. But if I don't catch it, don't stop it, it grows into this horrible, snarling monster inside me, and the bile begins to boil.

This isn't normal.

Why is it that I focus so intently on comparing what I look like to other people? It could be my best girl friend, a complete stranger on the street, or an actress. I react the same way, time and time again. I used to think it was because I was single, and doomed to singleness for the rest of my life, because there were so many more attractive people in the world that no man would ever lower himself to marry me.


Then I met my husband, Vince, and he showed me that choosing someone to spend your life with wasn't just about being pretty. He loved me because we joked, and talked, and shared pieces of ourselves that we had never been able to share with anyone else. I'm not saying my husband doesn't think I'm pretty, but I am saying he showed me that that shouldn't be the focus of a real relationship.

I thought this would fix me. 

It didn't.

I slowly slipped back into this mindset of comparing myself to every girl who passed. I wrote little notes to myself, and asked myself why I wanted to be pretty so badly. The more I talked to myself about it, the more twisted and tangled I got, until I was a mess. So I talked to Vince about it, and he calmed me down, but I couldn't shake that feeling.


Why do I feel so compelled to look a certain way? Why do I feel like I have to meet a particular standard of beauty to be worth something? Why am I a little bit scared, deep down in the irrational, emotional, animal part of me, that if I can't meet that standard Vince will magically stop loving me? Why am I so screwed up in the head?

I wish I could say I came to this conclusion on my own, but I didn't. Vince and I talked about it as we drove to Somerset today. 

The easy answer is to say that social media pounds it into our heads that we have to look this way. But why is media that way? Why is it that these ideas and standards drive women to hurt themselves by not eating, to get plastic and silicone implants under their skin, to get fat cells sucked out of one part and pumped into another? Something isn't right about that.


We weren't created to focus on the outside. Our bodies aren't bad. Loving your spouse's body, thinking he or she is beautiful, isn't bad. But focusing on that, letting that inform your decisions, your aspirations, your goals in relationships, isn't good. It isn't normal, because it isn't the way we were meant to be.


If we were meant to base everything on a look, then why would it be so easy to fall in love with someone because of the way you feel when you talk to them? Why would we be able to connect with someone on any kind of deeper level? 


I love my husband more than anyone. He's an attractive man. But I didn't decide to spend forever with him because of that. I chose him because when we talk, I feel something stir inside of me that isn't there unless we're sharing ideas, and emotions. When we're communicating in that intimate way, I feel my core reaching out to blend with his. I can only attribute that to God. 


God created us to bond with another person based on the things he put inside of us. He created us to reach out to him and communicate and blend with him with all that's inside of us, and on a smaller scale I believe he created us to have human-to-human relationships in that same way. 


A girl is "pretty" because that kind of girl is popular during that time, for whatever reason. Right now, it's based quite a bit on what's on television, in music, in magazines, in movies. But that wasn't always the case. My point is, that changes. It shifts and moves slowly over time, so that the desirable female characteristics now may not be desirable anymore in 10 or 20 years. How can it be, if something changes that quickly, that this is what we should strive for in our relationships?

That's what I mean when I say that it isn't normal.

Remember the overly emotional, melodramatic, sounded-like-someone-was-dying paragraph at the beginning? Those feelings, while being melodramatic and such, happen on a regular basis to me because of these fleeting things. Because the television has told me for over 20 years that the way I look isn't up to par, and I should feel bad about that.


I have a husband who loves me, and who makes sure I know that he loves me every day. I have a husband who isn't so wrapped up in all of this fleeting stuff that he tells me I'm beautiful, but focuses on everything else that he loves. It's really sad that even though I have that, I still feel inadequate for reasons that don't matter.


It's like our entire society has a disorder, where reality is skewed into this bizarro version of how we were meant to be. And even though I know rationally what the truth is, even though I know how unimportant looking like a television model really is, I can't shake it.

I know that God created us to be more than shells, 

more than dust. 

He created us to explore these ideas, 

these hearts, 

these connections 

without being blinded by things that don't really matter. 

It isn't normal to focus our eyes, our energies, on the mist, when the ocean is right beneath it, waiting for us to dive in. I want to focus on the ocean, to dive into substance with only a passing glance for the mist above it, because the mist will only be there a short time before it changes and is gone. But the ocean, even if it changes, will last.

Change CAN Be Good

In my last post, I talked about striving to be happy with who we are, as opposed to striving to be who we aren't in order to be happy. I mentioned, near the end, that just because I wrote about it, didn't mean I would suddenly change and be completely okay with who I am. But so far, in the last week, I have at least been more aware of the times when I want to be someone I'm not, and because of that, I have been able to curb those irrational thoughts and emotions a little more.

Strangely though, most of those times have been harder for me than before I was so hyper aware of it. As if becoming aware of it brought it into the light, and now I can't turn that light off, I can't even dim it. Now that this flaw of mine, this flaw of wanting to change myself constantly, has a big old spotlight on it, it's even harder to ignore when it creeps into my fluffy little head.

This is good, and this is bad.

It's good in that I AM aware of it now, and it isn't something that can just simmer beneath the surface and eat away at my self confidence slowly, like bacteria. But it's bad, in that now that I'm so hyper-aware of it, my OCD kicks in and I start to compound the issue by thinking, "I shouldn't think this way. I should be happy with who I am. But sometimes I DO want to change things. Is that wrong? What's wrong with me that I can't be happy with me?" And left to my own devices, I'll think myself dizzy.

In a way, even the bad is kind of good, because it's made me think about this whole thing more in depth. And while I tend to over think things a lot of the time, I think we owe it to ourselves to explore things to their fullest. That being said, here's the addition I've decided to tack onto my last post.

Should we want to be who we aren't?

No. Definitely not. I've never met someone

who didn't have at least a few really great qualities.

She we be happy with who we are?

Yes. We were made the way we are, and given the

abilities we have, and that's something pretty special.

BUT, should we work towards bettering

ourselves each and every day?

Yes. Yes we should.

To be clear, I'm not saying that I think if you go out and dye your hair, or buy a new dress, or a new car, or start acting or talking or thinking like someone else, that you're bettering yourself. On the contrary, I think those behaviors suppress the person that God created in you, and that is a travesty. What I am saying, however, is that if you have something in your life, in your heart, in your head, that is detrimental to you or the people around you, then changing THAT isn't a bad thing.

Let's say you're the girl from the last post, the one who thinks that if ONLY she could have the right hair color, her life would be perfect. This girl's flaw isn't that she wants to change her hair color, her flaw is the thing driving her to change her hair color.

Be happy with who you are,

and be ready and willing

to change the bits of you

hurt others, or hurt yourself.

I'm the kind of person who sometimes snaps at people without meaning to. They never deserve it, and more often than not, that person really cares about me. But, whether or not they care about me, I know that I shouldn't snap at them. All that's doing is hurting them, and adding to the anger in me, like little drops in a big bowl. A few won't fill it up, but if you keep adding drops, eventually it will overflow. Working to change this aspect of myself, working to be kinder with my words and to LOVE BIGGER, is a good change. It's a change that is for the right reasons.

If you change something for your emotional health, your bodily health, the health of your relationships, it isn't a bad thing. Be kinder. Eat better. Walk more. Learn something. None of these things are bad, and they're all changes...

The whole point of THIS blog, is to clarify what I mean to say in the last, and that is, don't change yourself, UNLESS you're changing things for the RIGHT reasons. As always, in my book anyway, it all comes down to love. If we love ourselves, then love others MORE than ourselves, things will be okay.

All of these changes come from love.

How can that be bad?

Who I am. Who I'm not.

Why do we always want to be what we aren't?

This thought is one I struggle with a lot, but for the last few weeks I've been struggling with it more often than not. Logically, I know that being something else won't make me happy. I know that I can't become a certain person to attain the happiness or the contentment that I need. I KNOW that that happiness and that contentment is available right this second, if I would just reach out and grab a hold of it. But illogically, emotionally, humanly, I still find myself seeing someone else, seeing what they can do, reading what they wrote, hearing what they have to say, and yearning to be more like that person in order to be complete, in order to be fulfilled.

Let me start with the idea

of wanting what we don't have,

or wanting to be what we aren't.

Here's a simple example that makes all of this easiest for me to understand. Let's say you're a brunette, and you think that if you could only be blonde, you would be happy with yourself. You think that if you become a blonde you will suddenly be beautiful, you'll be happier because you'll be more confident, people will look at you and think what you've always wanted them to think, and in all of that you'll find contentment and joy. So, you go to the best hair salon and go blonde. You look like a completely new person, and you get all the reactions you hoped for. For a few days, you're on a happy-high.

And then the new wears off.

Your blonde hair becomes the norm, and you see a girl with brown hair walk by and think, if only your hair were dark again, you could be a natural beauty like her, and then you'd be happy.

You see where I'm going with this.

That is a really simple example of what I'm talking about. We think, well, I think, that if I can only be what I'm not (thin, athletic, a great singer, a guitar player, a pianist, a painter, et cetera), if I could only achieve those goals of being the very things that I'm not, THEN I would be complete. But I hope from my hair-example that it's clear why that philosophy, that idea, is faulty.

It's easier to want to be what we aren't,

than to try and live in the fullness

of what we are,

of who we are.

I'm not thin, or athletic, or a great singer, or a guitar player, or a pianist, or a painter, but I AM a writer, a friend, a thinker, a coffee drinker, a doodler. It's easier to pick at the things I'm not and say, "Why can't this be me? What's so wrong with me that I don't live up to these things?" than to say, "This is who I am, and I'm happy about that. I'm proud of that."

I have been given all of the ingredients for happiness. I have been given a life that is my own, that is unique, to live, to experience, to BE in. And in that life, no matter what the particulars are, I have all that I need to be content. No matter what your circumstances are--and I know that some circumstances are so difficult, so hard, so painful that it's hard to breathe, let alone look at the bright side--no matter what they are, there is happiness there, even if it's very hard to see.

I want to want to be what I am, who I am.

I'm not saying that, just because I've thought about it some, and written about it some, that I'll be forever changed, but it's part of the process. To be aware of it, and to try and live and be who I am, rather than who I'm not.