On Valentine’s day I started thinking about love and all the people I loved and cared for, and for the first time since I can remember, I was at the top of my list. I always talk about self-love and telling people how important it is to live a happy, healthy life, but I was still battling with this same issue on a regular basis. I would have happy moments and points when I truly did love myself, but those moments were short lived. Why is it that I haven’t made any major changes, yet my view of myself keeps changing? I just couldn’t figure it out.

One day while in my Cognitive Processing Therapy (PTSD counseling), my therapist gave me an extra assignment. He asked me to write down things I wanted to do and actually do them for an entire week. Sounds easy and fun, right? Not for me! I had no idea what “I” wanted to do. For the majority of my life, I did what everyone else wanted to do or wanted me to do. If someone would ask me what I wanted, my answer was likely going to be “I don’t know” or “I don’t care, whatever is fine with me.” But now, here I am, in a place where I have to do things that I actually want to do without any input from anyone else. My mind starts going and I tell him that everything I do now is what I want to do. He responded, “No, those are things you have grown accustomed to doing and now they are a habit for you. I want you to do something that you don’t do out of habit but because YOU genuinely want to do it.” I sigh and say “ok” like my life as I know it is over. I joked with him about it, but I was seriously afraid. I mean who doesn’t know what they want to do. It took me some time, like a few days…ok more like a week. I went back to counseling the next week and had nothing. I did absolutely nothing that I wanted to do. I mean there was some random inserts in my weekly log that included eating Chic-Fil-A and doing nothing but reading a book, but apparently that wasn’t what he meant. I needed to do some soul searching.

During this time, I was also working on other ways to better myself, like downsizing my closet and other areas of my life. During one of my meditations I went in with the intention of discovering what it was I wanted. It was during this that it seemed like a lightbulb went off on the inside of me. The first thing I wanted to do was go to a yoga class. Like a REAL yoga class in a nice studio. I also realized that I wanted to be ok with being me. I sat at my vanity and looked myself in the mirror and asked myself, “Who are YOU?” I began writing in my journal and things I have been thinking about for some time started to make its way to the paper. I was realizing that my entire life has been a lie. Well not my entire life. There are some areas where I made decisions that I wanted to make without thinking about others. But for the vast majority of my life I was not being myself. My truest self to the core. No wonder it was so hard for me to love me. I was trying to force myself to love this made up version of me that the inner me didn’t know. I was trying to force myself to love a mask. I was trying to force myself to love a person I created in order to fit in and be loved by others. It worked! I was and still am loved by so many people. Most of those people will love me regardless of who I am, while others will only love the façade I created.

I asked myself again, “Who am I?” Well, what I have realized over this discovery is that I hate fashion and if I could redo my entire closet, I would probably choose more Boho Chic style clothes, t-shirts and sneakers, or workout clothes. I don’t care about labels and as long as it was good quality, I wouldn’t mind getting most of my clothes out of Walmart. I love minimalism. I can wear the same things over and over, just like I don’t mind eating the same things over and over. Less is more and if I don’t have to put much thought into things, I am so much happier. I don’t like being around a lot of people because I really don’t fit in. I had a lot of friends growing up, but I always felt that I really didn’t quite fit in with any of them. I was a cheerleader and it was cool, but I also loved hanging out with the Goth’s in front of the library. They used to play Manson on their cassette players and let me listen. I am not very religious at all, although growing up and into my adult life, I was considered a Christian. I don’t believe there is anything wrong with having a religion, but I have realized that it just isn’t who I am. I am a very spiritual person and I truly believe that the spirit within us is not bound to a religious belief. Our spirit is limitless and it was time for me to be free.

I am an empath through and through. I can feel the energy of others very strongly, hence why I don’t like being around people. I absolutely love being alone. If I go out and have to be surrounded by a lot of people, I need at least a full 24 to 48 hours to recover. I am not joking! It is draining. I am now learning how to ground and protect myself from the transference of the energy and not picking up the energy unless I really want to. I am a healer as well, which I know most who truly know me won’t be surprised by this realization. I have always been the one to try to make people better, whether that be by motivating them, giving words of encouragement, or just listening. Whatever it was they needed, I was sure to be there for them. I knew as a kid that I had a healing energy, but I also didn’t know what that meant either. I was always told by people that I had a very strong spirit and energy about me. Again, I didn’t know what that meant or what to do with that information. I am not sure if they knew either. It wasn’t until recently that I started to feel and learn more about what is within me. I can’t wait to dive deeper into that part of me.

I absolutely love yoga! I mean LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, YOGA! It captures the essence of who I am at the core. I would do yoga at the gym some years ago, but it was nothing like going to a studio and being submersed in the essence of it. It is everything I speak of on a regular basis, mind, body, and spirit. It is ME! Yoga is ME! After my first class, I told my parents about it and my dad immediately started asking me about the different poses and wondering what we did in class. I was looking at him crazy, like how do you even know this stuff. Come to find out, my dad was a yogi and deep meditator back in his younger days. This entire time, this has been in my blood and I had no idea. Who are you dad? What else are you holding out from me? HAHAHAHA!! No but seriously, this was another huge AHA moment for me. Things that seem to come so natural to me has a lot to do with the blood that is flowing through my veins. Part of me wishes I knew this earlier because maybe I would have been ok with being different at an earlier age. Part of me is happy that I went through this process of learning who I am in my own way because I am embracing it and loving it even more. It has been a journey thus far and it has only just begun.

So again, who am I? I am. That’s it. I just am. I am a being, being who I am, without any boundaries around who I am nor what I can do. I love who I am!