How I found Myself

Last night I wrote this post about losing myself. I went to bed thinking about it and thanking God that it seems like everything is peaceful. Then I woke up and realized that this isn’t always how it will be. There will be more problems, more kids leaving and growing and changing. Aaliyah will grow up and won’t remind me of the most innocent version of myself. She will be her own person with her own opinions, flaws and heartaches. Something will happen, she will be heartbroken and she will change. That’s life.

I saw a lady on Good Morning America talking about her new book called The Pie of Life or something like that, the name of the book is not the point, but what is the point is that this lady was talking about women working outside of the home. I do not like when people decide that what works for them is the best thing ever so then everyone else has to live according to what is working for them in their life. It’s one thing to say “I have balance in my life when I work outside my home” and a whole other thing to say “every woman should work outside her home”. One makes sense and the other is being an arrogant jack wagon who thinks that every woman is just like you. This is the problem that I have with fad diets, fad workout plans, fad lifestyles. People become jerks. But that is what we do as human beings: we try to fix things. We are not comfortable in the space where suffering is so we try to get out of it any way we can.

I do think this woman had a point though when it comes to balance in our lives, I just don’t agree that balance looks the same for everyone. Some women get energy from being with their children and need to work hard to have other things in their lives. Some women get energy from work and need to work hard to have other things in their lives. We all have things we love and have to tear ourselves apart from in order to fulfill our other responsibilities.

I am codependent. Not just a little but like really codependent. That doesn’t mean what people usually think it means. It means that I take care of everyone and everything else and not take care of myself. I forget to do things that make me happy, fill me with joy and purpose. For me, the reason that I forget to do these things is because I do not feel like I have the right to do things that make me happy. People think that all the time I was sleeping around and getting wasted drunk was me doing what made me happy, but the truth is that was all stuff I did to silence the siren in my head saying that I am bad. I thought “screw it! If I’m bad, then let’s go all.the.way.” and that’s what I did. It didn’t work. I was never able to shut the siren off.

What has helped quiet that siren is to get to know who I am. I use a lot of tools and I pray a lot. God is so good because He has taken me by the hand and started to show me who I am. He knows me better than anyone since He made me and everything. He made me for a reason, He knows what that reason is and He is capable of preparing me for whatever He wants me to do with my life. Why I had never consult Him before I was 33 years old in what my purpose was and how to accomplish it, but it didn’t.

I would never have considered it had I not picked up the Catechism of the Catholic Church, shut out all the noise that I had heard about Catholics and all the things that shitty Catholics had said or done to me and just read the thing. When I did that, I was shocked. When I read St. Augustine’s confessions I realized that convert Catholics have always written memoirs about their conversions. When I read secular memoirs I see people who are searching and searching for what I was once looking for. They are looking for it in the stars, in the rhythm of the ocean, in sunsets, in other books and in the mirror and a lot of times they find a lot of things, but what they don’t find is the Truth. The Truth you can see, that breathes, that dies, that resurrects. The Truth with a name, His name is Jesus. That Truth turned my life upside down but that is where I found myself. Jesus is the anchor that keeps me balanced as I try to figure out what makes me joyful and how to work it all in to my life. In the middle of my pie of life is Jesus on a throne as the Lord of my life.