Who You Are

Sleep evades me tonight. I don’t want to sleep. I have become restless.

My mom told me tonight that I have been gone long enough, “it’s time to come home,” she said. I think she is right, but probably not for the reasons she believes. I came to Seattle for a yoga teach training–on the surface. I also came looking for something. I was also running away and trying to hide from something else.

For whatever reason tonight was the night that I decided to go back and watch my wedding video. My friend and amazing photographer, Mark, (of LeahAndMark.com) has been catching up on his editing and one of his wedding home videos was on my Facebook feed tonight calling my name. It began a wedding video spiral that eventually led to me watching my own wedding video. Yes, I was married. And now I am not. Now I am divorced. It is still weird. It may always be weird.

I cried. I cried, but not in a gut-wrenching-why-is-this-my-life sort of way. It was more of an acknowledgment for what it was, what it is. And it is still sad. I can see now that he did not really look happy. He sort of looked dead. I looked scared. Or maybe I am projecting into the past. It does not really matter. It is gone. It has happened. The amazing thing is that–to a certain degree–I have accepted that.

I was talking to my host the other night about re-discovering self. My realization of the moment…I never knew myself. This is not a path of healing and rediscovery. It is a path of healing and self-discovery–for the very first time.

Tonight…as I was waiting for the bus…something interesting occurred to me. My friend Matthew says things like, “own who you are” and other “be unapologetically you” statements all of the time. These statements though imply that you know who you are.

I was chewing on something he had said earlier in the day and it occurred to me that I have let go of so many things this summer…but something I have yet to release is the way I talk to myself, think of myself, and let insecurities dictate my day.

“Do I enjoy the comfort of my insecure thoughts? Do they keep my company like a security blanket? Do I hold on to them because the fear of allowing myself to enjoy who I am discovering I actually am, to allow myself to embrace me fully, and to dive into the world as a secure, confident, and comfortable in my skin woman would be terrifying? The possibilities! The change of the hue of the world! Am I afraid of changing the lens through which I see the world simply because it would be different than my negative, cynical, and mean self-talk I am used to?”

[I know. I am the only one that deals with this. You can scroll to the end for some inspirational quote and be done with me for today since you have no idea what I am talking about.]

It occurred to me though, that this all seems to make sense. I have known myself {internally} for so long as someone who is inadequate, scared, and a perpetual failure–remember recovering perfectionist here. Thoughts for another day–that to permanently allow myself to believe I am capable, secure, lovely, and truly imperfectly perfect…that my world may come crashing down on top of me…right?

Possibly. And it might be the best thing that has ever happened.

I am restless.

I am restless because I am ready to live. My life is back home. I am ready to go back to life and begin truly living.

Have you ever woken up one day and come to the realization that “this,” this big, beautiful, ugly, crazy, chaotic, twisted, amazing, thing is life…and you want more from it? 

I’ve told you before that my grandmother discovered “life” at age 25. She always said, “I woke up and thought, ‘Oh. This is life.” 

Well…I have woken up and realized I have not been living life. I have been hiding in life and from life. I have been hiding, hoping that no one found out how inherently wrong I was. Wrong. Bad. Broken.

Broken.

Which I am. But I have no logical reason to hide from that. It is what makes me human. It is what makes me redeemable. 

Maybe this makes sense to you. Maybe you have felt broken. Maybe you have been hiding. Maybe you’ve tried to “have it all together” or “be perfect” and failed miserably. Maybe you are simply unhappy. 

Wherever you find yourself tonight, I hope that you create the space to look at yourself. Not to look at the life that you are living, but at who you are. Do you know? Do you know who you are? Do you know what makes you come alive and what brings you pain to your core? Do you know what the driving force getting you out of bed is in the morning? Are you leaving a legacy? Chances are that you are, in some ways, leaving some sort of legacy. Do you know what it is? Are you intentional about what it is? The life you are living is created by the person that you are. 

So…do you know who are you?

~~~~~~~

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” 

{Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning}