“Don’t think about me. Don’t think about how I will respond or what I want you to be. Just be what you are. You have to find yourself.”
This is what my husband told me today and I must tell you, I squirmed. For a few reasons.
First and foremost — because he was right, damn him! He said it when it should have been me. Me, the terribly wise and present person who thought herself oh so … whatever … ah, in short – I was ashamed of myself. My pride smarted because I could not deny the fact that he was right and I was thoroughly messed up.
Which was another reason for squirming? I am not supposed be getting messed up anymore. I am supposed to have outgrown it.
And then there was the fact that I knew he was right because I saw it before we had this conversation, and my seeing it made no difference at all. I collapsed nonetheless. Back into my messiness, back into the uncertainty and fear, back into the endless “what am I going to do with myself” questions, the “why am I here?”, the “what is being done to me?” questions.
Questions, questions, questions that plagued me and worried me and hurt me. Questions that made me scared of life, scared of the world, scared of myself.
I’ve been lost in them for a very long time, and then I looked up for just a moment and then I was myself again. Myself. Here. I could feel myself and there were no more questions. Instead there were my choices. Nothing was being done to me anymore – I was doing. I was choosing. I was creating. What? Oh, that mattered not at all. Answers mattered not at all because I was back and I did not need to look for answers anymore.
What mattered was that I was back, me — the creator of answers. And I was safe.