Thoughts on Being Me

Good day so far! I had lunch in town with a dear friend, with whom I've spent very little quality time in recent months. She's away a lot and the times we've had together have either been on the fly or with other people. It was great to sit and talk with her face to face, relaxed and unhurried.

After catching up a bit on travels and family news, we got on the subject of being me in a partnership or marriage... of being who I am rather than what I perceive he wants me to be. We've both experienced some difficulties in that department... maintaining identity and purpose, making decisions for the good of self, freedom of expression. A delicate balance that seems too often to get tipped in favor of the spouse... his identity, his purpose, his needs. It has to be a two-way deal, of course. We have to bend, of course. But what about when we are feeling that our very essence is lost?

Hey, I'm not on a pitty-pot here about my marriage. Hiding who I am, hiding my feelings, not expressing my needs goes way back to childhood years for me. And very early in life, I learned to sooth the me in hiding with sweets. A life-time pattern, it carried right into my late-in-life marriage. I don't need to assert myself or stand up for myself when I can run to the kitchen and slather peanut butter and jelly and butter on a couple of pieces of toast, do I?

Well no more. On the way home from our lunch, I started thinking about a passage in Holy Hunger, where the author, Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, wrote this in her journal:

...On that momentous morning, I leaped out of bed in a rage. I put on loud music... Sometimes music can startle me awake. Sometimes when the boat is becalmed and the sails hang limp, music can blow wind into my sails... I stood with my feet planted firmly on the ground and proclaimed one simple fact. I announced one basic truth: This is my life. My life belongs to me and to no one else. It is mine. I will face it, choose it, work with it. I will not live someone else's life; I will live my own.

Holy Hunger is such an important book for me right now!!! I love typing the passage above. It resonates and says it's OK to want to be me, to begin a discovery of who I am!