I love my new therapist. She makes me work. She stops me. She challenges me. She cuts through my bullshit, my intellect, my technicalities, logic and loopholes. She hears what I say and what I don’t say. She’s in my corner.
The thing is: I’m not in my own corner.
And while my bipolar diagnosis, in part, explains my do-this-then-that-go-here-then-there-and-check-this-off-my-list behavior, there is a part of me that is simply running from something—from feeling, from fear of the unknown, from myself.
Bam. #epiphany
She tasked me with planning a day wholly, entirely, fully for myself.
This may be the single most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do—childbirth included.
Looking back on my life I can’t sort out what Lauren loved to do from what Lauren was expected to do from what Lauren thought she was expected to do.
Do I have a garden because I genuinely like gardening or do I have a garden because it’s good for the earth, our tummies, and my Dearest Daughters’ understanding of the world?
Do I truly like cooking or am I trying to live up to the my California foodie reputation?
Did I learn to crochet because learning something new and challenging is fulfilling, or was it because I wanted to make a hipster infinity scarf?
And these are the easy questions; they don't include questions about my college choice, my career choices or lackthereof, marriage, motherhood, mediation, what I ate for lunch.
I know not all things are strictly black or white, here or there, this or that. But, I’ve been so so so led by figments of my imagination and diversions of my wonky brain, that I can’t tell what is true. I’ve been so led by ideas, assumptions and, sometimes, delusions of who I should be and what I should do.
Today is my twenty-ninth birthday and I can’t tell you who Lauren is. I can tell you what she’s done, where she’s been, how she got here, but I can’t tell you who she is.
(Perhaps, you can, but for the purposes of my therapy homework, I’m not allowed to ask you.)
This is a sad and honest fact that brings me to tears, makes me feel lost and hopeless.
It might sound melodramatic to you, but that is how out of touch I am and have been with myself the past couple of decades. I have sailed the seas of life, rode the rollercoaster, climbed mountains, but I have done so blindly, driven by who-knows-what, always climbing, out of habit, grasping at the next thing and the next, never in the present, always guessing, second-guessing, checking off a box on an endless To-Do list.
I've always been moving, never pausing, running and running.
I can’t sit still.
I figuratively and literally can’t stand being alone with myself. I can’t blame even a percentage of that feeling on my iPhone, but having one has certainly made my self-tolerance over the past few years worse, as I use social media and the Weather Channel app to fill the gaps, the silence, the stillness.
Life finally stopped—about eleven months ago. My body and my soul shouted: STOP! YOU CANNOT GO ON LIVING LIKE THIS!
I certainly stood at attention, took note and the past year has been about taking care of myself, about coping with depression, anxiety, panic.
I have come so far and yet here I am still.
And so, I sit here, forcing myself to focus, to sort out my truth. My truths.
Dearest Daughters, I try my best to give you opportunities to be who you are, to be authentic and true. I think that’s pretty easy when you’re two or four. I know, it’s also all too easy to mold, shape, and shut down a growing child. I pray that is not my roll in your life.
I don’t want to put you in boxes either, but I do take note of things that delight you, things that you gravitate towards, things that make you unique.
I wish that I could go back and watch myself playing when I was two, four, seven. What would I see? Who would I see? Who would I have become if I had listened to, not the voices—real or imagined—but to my heart of hearts, my mind of minds, my dream of dreams?
Who?
Dearest Daughters, who? Who are you? What makes your heart beat? What makes your mind leap? What are your dreams?
We all struggle with these questions, some more than others, some for a moment, some for a lifetime. Some for twenty-nine years.
But, only you know the answers. Only you know your truth. Don’t let anyone write it for you. Don’t let the world, or a map, or a list dictate your life. Don’t let me or your daddy or your Facebook friends have a goddamn say. Trust yourself, tune in to every fiber of your being, and don’t let yourself think for one second that the person you are isn’t worth being known.
Love,
