The real me

Here's my assignment from Travelin'Oma. She's making us dig deep inside. Sometimes it's easier to skim off the top!

How did I become who I am? There are so many factors that it’s hard to narrow it down. I feel like every experience in life molds us. Even passing through certain airwaves can make a difference.

We moved to the Salt Lake area a few years ago after having lived in the Seattle area for over 20 years. It was very scary, and I was missing my sense of self a little bit. I remarked once to a friend that I felt overwhelmed, and wondered if I could fit in here. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Don’t you dare sell yourself short! You are every bit as wonderful as you ever were, and you have an enormous amount to offer to any place you go.” It was just what I needed to hear.

My parents somehow made me feel like there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do or be. I just had to decide, get to work, and it was possible. They weren’t overly lavish in their praise, but I certainly knew they thought I was capable of anything. It was the perfect way to build my confidence. For eighteen years I was very self-assured.

Then in the middle of my senior year of high school, a horrifically embarrassing thing happened to me. I almost can’t even write about it. It makes me squirm in my chair to think of it. I’ve only shared it with a handful of people that I trusted explicitly. It is never something I would want to be reminded of, or have thrown back in my face. It still makes me cry the few times I’ve told it. I think to myself – logically things like this happen to people all the time and they simply laugh it off, and never think of it again. For some reason that wasn’t so for me. Thirty-four years later it is still painful.

That event took a toll on my self-esteem. Not a huge toll, but it did effect how I feel about myself. Most of the time it’s negligible, but sometimes it rears its ugly head. I wonder how one hour of my life can put that big a dent in the wonderful, building, eighteen year foundation my parents built along with the fabulous experiences I have had since then. I look at that experience as my foundation for the “what will people think of me” part of myself.

Mostly I don’t worry about what others think. But perhaps there is a positive aspect of the “what will other people think of me” mentality. We do need to be conscious of those around us in our way of living. And if what they think of me helps to build me and make me stronger, then that is a good thing. But if I diminish myself in the process of trying to prove myself to others, it is not positive. Knowing the difference is what makes the difference in my life.