This is Me

“When the sharpest words wanna cut me down I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out I am brave, I am bruised I am who I'm meant to be, this is me Look out 'cause here I come And I'm marching on to the beat I drum I'm not scared to be seen I make no apologies, this is me.”

– The Greatest Showman

My whole life I never felt like I fit in. No matter where I was or who I was with, I felt out of place. I spent a lot of years changing myself and pretending to be something I wasn’t in the desperate hope to fit in. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I realized how exhausted I was from keeping up the façade for so long. My entire life I had never just been me. At that point, I didn’t even know who that was anymore. I had spent so much time trying to fit in, that I had completely lost who the real me was underneath it all.

One day I decided that I had finally had enough of pretending. Where I had once been so desperate to fit in, I realized I wanted more than anything to simply be myself and more importantly, to figure out who I really was as an individual. Once I made the decision to drop the façade and let the mask fall away, my entire life began to change. I realized that in changing myself, my world would be changed too.

Walking away from my nearly two decades long marriage was quite possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever done. There was a voice inside of me screaming that it was the right thing to do. The voice became so loud I simply couldn’t ignore it anymore, and despite my desperation to hold onto the life I had built, we came to the agreement I couldn’t stay anymore. No one around me understood it, I barely understood it. All I knew was, without a doubt in my mind, it was what I had to do in order to find me or risk losing myself forever.

This change I was making within myself ended up costing me my marriage, friends, and other aspects of my life I had once thought were so important. I was slowly finding the person I was meant to be, though. I had spent my whole life doing for others, and putting their happiness first. I was in my mid-thirties and finally being a little bit selfish. I was finally putting my needs and my happiness first. I had no idea what that happiness looked like, but I knew I had to go after it.

I’ve had a year of ups and downs, wins and losses. There has been laughter and tears. Somewhere in between it all, I found her. I found the me I was always meant to be. It’s cost me people that were once my whole world. It has looked nothing the way I had imagined my life to look. It’s been a struggle, and there have been times I doubted myself. I stuck with it, and I stood by my choices despite the loss and heartache they caused.

For the first time in my life I was able to look in the mirror and see myself shining through. There was no more mask, and the façade had crumbled. All I saw was myself. I began to feel as though I fit in, I was finding my place. I never realized that the emptiness I had always felt had to be filled by me and not by anything or anybody else. The restlessness I had always felt was eased by finally being able to accept myself. I found the self-love I had always lacked by allowing myself to be … myself.

The truth is, for the first time ever, I truly am me. Love me or hate me, take me or leave me … This is me.