Reflecting on motherhood...

When I was younger, high school age, I started feeling incredibly lonely.  Out of place.  Even with the friends I had had since I was a child.  Even with my family.  I felt I fit in no where.  It was a sad state.  I would contemplate and journal for hours on this isolated reality (or false reality) I had made for myself, but nothing came to be.  I never felt settled. I would hate myself for feeling this way.  Try my hardest to fit into the world that had been made for me, but long desperately to be a part of another world all together.  I couldn't figure it out.  It never made sense.  The grass was perpetually greener elsewhere.  It was never that I had a bad life.  I had the best life.  I especially know that looking back.  But what's that they say about hindsight?  It's most definitely true.  

Anyway, I wanted to move on... see another side of things... be my own person... stop being so "good" and draw some negative attention for once.  Or something like that.  My grades failed.  My friendships became rocky.  My depression deepened.  And my self absorption soared.  My grades got a bit better.  My friendships got stronger once again.  I graduated high school.  Went away to college.  Came home.  Ran away to NYC.  Got lost.  Ran away again to DC.  And finally, here, I found someone to ground me.

  

I will not say that this narcissistic trait decreased as I got older, but my world view has broadened into more than my tiny world.  I have seen more and become wiser, though I am more acutely aware now of how little I know and how much more I have to learn.  

This reflection has come from the idea that soon I will celebrate my third Mother's Day.  I remember a conversation I had with my mom while I was still pregnant with Caroline.  I told her I was scared, but excited.  I told her I had never anticipated something that I knew would be so life changing and permanent.  I was always in a state of motion and love to be in a state of slight discomfort, if only to challenge myself on a higher level than that of which I had been on previously.  Motherhood, however, seemed so stagnant.  It seemed as though that would bring me back down and drown me in comfortable monotony.  Yet, now I see how I could not have been more wrong.  In fact, motherhood is the complete opposite of what I thought.  It challenges me every single day.  

This egotistical view I had for myself, even when I thought I was "doing good" or trying to rebel, changed almost immediately when I took the reigns of motherhood.  It has brought me to a place I never thought I'd be and most definitely never expected to love.  For so many years, I was searching for who I was supposed to be.  But finally, I have realized, that life is about so much more than myself.   Yes, I still believe it is important to keep my identity as something other than "mom", but Mommy is not a title that I will ever push aside or try to stifle with my own self-love.  I adore my daughter more than life itself, and I feel that my new place in life these last two and a half years has brought me to a greater understanding of my own mother.  I feel that it has given me insight and brought me closer to her, and that couldn't make me happier.  

So, I guess, the point of this rambling, is to say that the loneliness I once experienced, the isolation I created for myself, has been diminished and wiped away.  My daughter is a gift beyond measure.  She fills my heart with so much indescribable joy and I praise my God for her every single day.  I have finally found it.  Who I was meant to be.  What I have been searching for.  And I truly couldn't be happier.  This is not to say that I don't still have dreams for myself or goals for my future, but right now, at this moment and in this place in my life, I am content. And for that, I am grateful.