Day 269: What I've Learned

Self-evaluation, or rather self re-evaluation occupies my mind of late. I am nearing the end of my year-long experiment with this blog and I am wondering if I have actually achieved my goals. Initially, I began writing in a public forum to hold myself accountable for things that too much solitude enabled me to ignore. That solitude, which left me a little lost initially, is also what has saved me. Sometimes the only way to truly see who we are, where we are going and even where we’ve been, is to submerge ourselves in our own consciousness. I may not now be fixed, but I can’t say I don’t know who I am.

I am, in the tradition of all self-absorbed individuals, obsessed with my own identity. Why have I made the choices in my life that led me to this place and would I make the same ones over again? How do others in the world, both now and in my past, view me? I admire those carefree individuals who seem not at all aware of themselves and bounce about life on rainbows and unicorn magic, but I would not want to be one of them. If this past year has taught me anything, it’s that I cannot escape from the self, whatever that may be and it is assuredly different in each of us. So nine months in and what I know is that I’m stuck with this person that 37 years, countless relationships, heartbreaks, successes and disappointments has created.

It’s not every day that I like myself entirely, but I recognize that I am still a work in progress and that despite saying goodbye to a few friendships that I miss, I’m happy with my path. I may be an iconoclast, but I am true to myself and I don’t pretend to think or be any other way than what is natural to me. True, this doesn’t often win popularity contests for me, but I am trying to get back to a life lived with integrity. As much as I’d like to please everyone in my life, I can only be me, and that woman is flawed and human. I do not endeavor to hurt or mistreat those in my life or that I may come into contact with, but at the end of the day I’m walking out with the same core principle I had when I started: it’s my life and I am not accountable for the judgment levied on me by another.