Change

I can give you a list about a mile long of things I can't stand about being in my 30's. No really, I have an actual running list: crows feet, flabby (fill in the blank), an insatiable need for sleep. It goes on and on. But do you know what I love about being in my 30's? Oh so much more than I could've imagined.

I love how much life has been teaching me about myself. I love that I can say I'm becoming the person I want to be. The path seems clearer than ever before and I love that. I'm feeling a calm and confidence about doing what I want to do, what I think is best for me and my family, and it feels good....well, most of the time.

Most of the time I feel this way.

Lately? Notsomuch.

I sit here and I want to cry as I type. I want to cry because I've spent so much of my time lately being so sad. And frustrated. And stressed over the unnecessary. I hate that I've once again let my life steer off course, surrounding myself with negativity and anxiety. Allowing other people to determine how I feel. Feeling more of an obligation to them than to myself. And it needs to stop.

So I'm makin' some changes.

I feel like I grew up this insecure, try-to-make-everyone-else-happy-first, don't-really-deserve-the-best girl. Don't get me wrong, my bag spills over with selfish moments. I've done more stupid things than there is time but overall it's always been about everyone else. It's always been about how I let everyone else make me feel. I recognized years ago the causes for so many of my actions and that helped me. It helped me better understand myself and lead me in the right direction to becoming the person I want to be. I guess that's normal though. It's normal not to really know who you are when you're younger and make a million stupid mistakes, right? Isn't that what growing up is about?

I guess.

I've always said that out of rough childhoods emerge two types of people: those that choose to continue on the same path, reasoning it's "all they've ever known", and those that, somewhere along the way, determine to change their course. I'm proud to say I'm the latter. I don't know when exactly it happened but a long time ago I decided my life was going to be different. I decided I didn't want to feel lonely, insecure, and unworthy anymore. It's been tough, and I've had setbacks, but I'm a million miles from where I came and that makes me proud. I've finally come to understand that this is not a road that will ever end but instead a journey that will take me through this life of mine. And these setbacks? Well, they're all par for the course, you see. But I'm learning that they don't have to define my life. That they won't define my life.

I want to let go of the anxiety I feel when I think someone's upset with me. I want to abandon the need to be the one that brushes things under the rug for the sake of keeping things comfortable. I want to fill my life with it's small miracles and I want to taste every moment it brings. My sweet girls deserve this. They deserve a mom that teaches them to live this very way.

So I'm done with the unnecessary. I'm done thinking that how other people act toward/around me is always a reflection on me. I'm not perfect. I'm not the perfect friend, the perfect sister, the perfect niece, or the perfect daughter. I don't send thank you cards when I should or always remember what's going on in someone else's life every moment. I can't always make time to do everything someone else wants me to do or grin and bear things that bother me. But I do my best and I always, always mean well.

I've been blessed with a handful of people that think that's more than enough and these are the people that deserve me, that deserve my time. So I'll spend my time with them because they make my life better not harder. I'll spend my time doing things I love to do, like writing and working on our house and making snow cones, and things that will make my girls' life fuller, like exploring new places and running around outside and eating those snow cones. I'm getting there. I'm on my way. And for the first time in these 32 years of mine I'm seeing my life for what it is, what it should have been all along.

Mine.