Who am I?

Maybe I’ll figure it out

I didn’t join Medium to make money. (I mean, there is the hope that it could turn into that, but what are those odds, right?)

I joined to try something new. To give myself a new chance to … I don’t know, become someone?

It’s sad that I’m almost forty years old and am still figuring out who I am, I guess.

But I have been a wife and mother for what feels like my entire life. I built my world around making my husband, and then my children, happy. I was a bride at barely eighteen and a mom at twenty. Not the youngest of everyone I know, but it did mean that my oldest child and I kind of grew up together. There were some perks in that for her (I had a lot more energy when she was little than some of her friends’ moms) and then some major drawbacks (namely, I was as immature as most 20-year-olds).

Even as a kid, I was the one who tried desperately to make my parents happy. I tried so hard to make sure I always kept appearances up and always did whatever was necessary to make other people feel like they mattered, no matter how bad it made me feel. Respect didn’t need to be earned. I knew I owed it to all adults. Because they were bigger than me. (Yuck.)

Now, here I am, almost forty, with one child who is a legal adult (I still can’t believe that, though) and a middle schooler who thinks my cool factor dips with each passing second. So . . . the days of me being needed for the little things (being followed into the bathroom or called for every ten seconds) are dwindling with every minute that passes.

In the void of that crazy level of busyness, I am beginning to be forced into the realization that I have nothing that is mine. Nothing that I do just because I want to. I’m not sure writing fits into that category either (the secret hope it turns into another money-making venture lives), but maybe it could be my thing. Maybe it will be.

Throughout the years, in between the diapers and the potty training and the making sure the girls did their best in school and caring for my parents as their health declined (they’re doing much better) and my husband’s work trips and all the prep and extra things on my plate that him going out of town entailed, there was always that little voice in the back of my head. “Who are you? What in the world do you even want?”

But who in the world had time to listen to that? I didn’t even have time to use the bathroom most days.

Who cared who I was? No one else seemed to, so why should I?

I mean, I was the one who never stopped. I was the one who said the right thing. I was the fixer. The dependable one. The one who showed up. The one you called when you were in a pinch. The one who always said yes. The one willing to take on the thankless jobs.

And I am still those things. And some of them are things I want to continue being. But alongside the gray hair that is determined to remind me that I am changing, the voice is getting louder. What used to be a whisper has turned into a scream.

Those things aren’t actually who I am as a person. That isn’t a personal identity, is it?

I’m honestly not sure.

I want to be a good mother. A good wife. A good daughter and sister. A good friend.

But what else is there? What else do people think of when they say my name? (I hope they at least think those things.)

Nothing yet, I guess. Maybe one day, they’ll say, “Isn’t she a writer?”

Who knows . . . but I’m planning to find out.

If you want to read more of my writing, just know that I don’t fit into any niche, and I’m not even going to try. I’ve always busted my butt to fit in and “do things right,” and I’m over that right now.

But maybe you could give them a look-see anyway. 😊