Oh shoot! Sorry. That wasn’t for you.

I don’t know what’s normal in your life, but I know what is and isn’t normal in mine. Normal for me is looking at a coworker and asking how I can speak so well on the job but get my words so mixed up the rest of the time. Normal for me is for my coworkers to hear “don’t mind me” as I mumble nonsense. Normal for me is to giggle my way through Kroger wondering who I’ve passed in the store and what on earth they might have heard as I passed them.

Does it make sense yet? Yeah, I was totally talking to me. Now, in case you’re wondering, no. I do not have extra appendages that get in the way or have tiny actual me clones that walk in circles around me or any other scenario that would allow for a literal interpretation of my words. And yet… I have still been in my way.

So here’s the thing… I could talk about how this person wronged me and how that situation changed me, but there’s something that gets ignored when I do that. To explain it, I’ve got a story.

Once upon a time I was supposed to play a peacemaker of sorts between a mom and an adult daughter. Now mom was aggravated with daughter for reasons that don’t matter, and daughter was mad at mom for treating daughter like the adult she was. I tried multiple times to ask daughter if she understood that, as an adult, she has to take responsibility for her own actions including how she responds to other people. Her answer? “Well, she…” aka “Nope”.

News flash. Only I am responsible for how I react to people and scenarios. And this is exactly how I have been in my way. I went from knowing that I was moving in a right direction based on my world to being then extremely concerned about having to someday explain my story. I became so concerned with the fact that it appears arguable on paper that I forgot that I did in fact accept that before I ever began to move in the first place.

And you know, it’s really stupid because I have had so many conversations and moments that seem to hug my little heart strings and remind me that I’m good. If anyone is going to be worth telling my story to then I have to trust that they will hear it as it is shared. There is literally no reason for me to freak out. But I do.

Then I stumbled on the best reminder of all. I felt myself challenged a few weeks ago to look at some scriptures that I had marked in the past. Now I know that I do not reference faith in God in this blog, but while that is actually intentional, don’t tune me out just because you don’t believe. Anyway, for me, the turning point was coming across Psalm 124, which has a portion that reads:

‘He didn’t go off and leave us. He didn’t abandon us defenseless.’

Whether you believe in any sort of higher power or not, the worst thing to do after gaining your freedom is to spend your time feeling guilty for now having it. Wherever you gained your strength before, revisit that. The people who helped you through before, listen to them. It can be a book, a song, the sky, your family, a poem, a place… really anything. But whatever it was, hold it close. There will be times when your journey may feel like a lot to try an share, and you will need your strength to determine when sharing it is even a priority.

For me, when I read that little reminder and learned about an opportunity near me that aligns perfectly with my heart, I remembered all of the ‘me’ that fell into the backdrop while I was dealing with how I had not Spoken up, how it took me so long to realize that I was worth More than scars, and how I desperately wanted to know how to live as it relates to The concepts of privacy and need. Did I just promo my own blog? Absolutely! My blog has been a gloss-over of my story, a highlight reel, if you prefer. And while everything captured within my blog was good and necessary in my own life, I’ve reached a place where I can re-awaken the parts of me that I stored away to keep them safe.

Maybe you don’t like how that sounds, and I don’t care. I needed my time. I needed my legos and puzzles and music. They kept me sane and grounded but encouraged me to deal with my life. And from then until now, when I needed to be me away from people’s perceptions and opinions, I have been held so close, and I have been looked after.

I thought the other day about why I deserve to have been so blessed, and my conclusion is that I don’t, but that I have never lost my desire to look up, so even when I haven’t been, to me it will feel that way. I have had my hiccups. I have had moments in my single life that tried to break me. But I’m not giving into them. Nor am I giving in to the world’s expectations of me.

I am finally getting fully out of my way. If someone doesn’t like my story, so be it. If they think they need to hear more to understand it, they clearly don’t. And if I get to where I spend my time wondering about such things… then I hope I recognize that I have blocked my own way again.

I am me. My thoughts are jumbled. My heart is soft. My eyes look for good. And right now, I vow to be completely no one else. I will do all I can to stay out of my way.

And don’t forget!

Be good to you because you deserve it!