Photo by Erica Bergsmeds www.ericabergsmeds.com What happens if I'm not who I think I am?
I've spent years reflecting on choices I made when I was a young woman, an even younger girl.
I always wanted to get it right. If I had my way, it would have been straight-A's, 1st place trophies all the way, First Honors this, and President that.
But I was an easily distracted kid, and an even more easily distracted student.
In high school, I was more interested in drafting the two page loose leaf letters I passed into my best friend's palm between mods. Those little expressions (musings on the boy I couldn't keep my mind off of, details of marathon phone sessions with said boy, the making of weekend plans with friends) were where I lived. Everything else terrified me.
Each time I pressed a note into my best friend's hand, the same fear was driving. Everyone seemed to have their callings, their places in the folds of the little world around me. I was awkward, shy, not particularly athletic, not incredibly artistic (like my brother and mom, and much later, my younger sister), though I had this vague understanding of my own creativity, the importance of expression, and the freedom and excitement it brought me. Still, I didn't see what gave me reason to be here, to take up space, in classrooms and dance classes and girl scout troops.
I lived for the future, ruminating on visions of a cookie cutter adult life where I married the boy from those letters, filled a beautiful home with Pottery Barn furniture, held down a "respectable career" (whatever that meant) and built a little life much like the one I grew up with - maybe having my children attend the same little Catholic schools I had just blocks from the Atlantic Ocean.
I thought maybe a little life like that would ground me. That all I needed to do was get by until the point I could claim that life for myself. I imagined an endless stream of simple days inside that little life would run into one another with a constant steady current, buoying me up. Everything else was just killing time until then.
But something changed during the the winter of 2004. My life unraveled further than I ever could have imagined it - first for my own actions and decisions, then further as a result of outside forces. Life as I knew it could not, would not, ever be the same.
What a blessing it was.
I couldn't have seen it then, wouldn't have ever been able to know it then, but it was the beginning of a beautiful winding journey, one that would lead me deeper and further into pain before it would begin to turn for the better.
I am far from perfect today.
I am far from the woman that teenager writing letters wished to become. But in so many ways life is better than I could have ever dreamed.
Today I live with compassion for the struggles of others, compassion for myself and my intrinsic imperfection.
Today I am the big sister I always wished I had to my siblings, and myself.
Today I work to accept that I'm doing the best I can.
To not live with fear, but with love.
Love for myself, for others, for the beloved and difficult equally.
To consider that the life of my wildest dreams might be something I couldn't have dreamed up for myself.
That to live with real love and honesty and intention places boundless opportunity before me.
I am certainly not who I thought I wanted to be, but in many ways I am closer to my earliest sense of self then I've been since I was a little girl.
And that my friends, is more than enough to keep me hungry, searching, building, creating, and most importantly loving - connecting.
Invigorated by the unknown.
What happens if I'm not who I think I am?
That question used to terrify me. keep me up at night.
I wanted someone to define me, point me in a direction, tell me the right way.
You have been built, placed here, specifically for this calling, this action. This is where you belong.
I wanted a sure thing.
Oh Honey, there are no sure things.
Thank goodness for that.
Xo, Meg