Working Trough Things

 At 72 years old one would think I had nothing left to work through.

One would be wrong.

Some days I feel 12 going through puberty hell.  I blame it on the cessation of long term medications which controlled my hormones.  

I feel a little lost, in a way, because at 72 I am still trying to figure out who I am!  How ridiculous!

I find myself spending copious numbers of hours researching how I am supposed to be.  For some reason I feel the need to be validated by some random talking head on the internet.  I want somebody to tell me what to wear, what kind of make up to wear, what to read — it is really annoying.  

I have a style both in my personal styling and in my home — I know what I am comfortable with but yet, I want SOMEBODY to tell me it is correct — the right way for me to be.  WTH is this? 

I would like to go back and blame somebody for this indecisive nature of myself, this lack of confidence in who I am and what I do but I have nobody to blame.  I don’t have a great self-esteem and I think, in that regard, I can look back at my relationship with my mother and find elements that could probably have contributed to that.  My mother was not a bad person and she was a wonderful mother and she adored me but her method of discipline was to express “disappointment” in me — the worst thing I could do in life was to disappoint her — I can’t believe that was the worst thing I could ever do but that I what I was told. And then, there was the time in the  6th grade when I was deemed inacceptable by my peers parents and their children told not to associate with me.  No fault of my own, they didn’t like my father, but I knew about this event and it stuck with me.  So, yeah, maybe I can blame them.  And I do.

But, that was eons ago — and here I am, trying to figure ME out — what is right for me and what to do about it.  And how to do it without somebody else to tell me it is ok, that  I am ok.  I think probably the description of this is self acceptance and self awareness.

So……..I bought a journal.  

Haha! Yes, a journal — a dotted Moleskin hard backed journal in classic black.  I am going to use it to try to figure me out — mostly with ideas, goals, doodles, food, anything I can think of that is a challenge that makes me question myself.  

I want to be me.  I don’t want to be what somebody wants me to be.  I don’t want to have to scour the internet to find out how I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to think or how I am supposed to look.  I think I have just lost sight of me.  Again, self acceptance.  I have spent so many years trying to be acceptable (thanks grown up mothers of my childhood peers).  I want to be enough — for me.  I need to accept me at this age and — as I told my girl — be true to myself.  Why do I think somebody else knows what is best for me?  

So, I have been reading that journaling is very theraputic.  I want to draw — no talent but loads of desire — so maybe some doodling will go on.  I need to break the comfort food cycle (ok, I can blame my mother for that!) so journaling food is probably going to be part of it — I just need to break the internet scrolling cycle.  Maybe the blue light is getting to my brain.

So, anyway, sorry for the slight rant here - and bringing up things that I don’t ever really choose to talk about — and hopefully the journal will get here soon.  I would have gone out to buy one but you know — ice.  Ugh.  

Have I mentioned I hate winter.  Hate is a strong word — winter is a strong season.