I sometimes think your past needs to visit you every so often just so you can remember who you used to be, why you were that way, what you wanted then and how different it all is to who you are now, why you are you now, and what you want now.
Lately, I've been remembering a lot, from my time in Germany to now and the memories, they don't fade quietly into the background like we all seem to think they should but rather sit in the back of your mind, biding their time to when a song or a food or a moment allows them to come rushing back. It starts with one but eventually they all come flooding back. From the time you were picked up for that first date with that first guy you really liked and the song on the radio captures that moment and whenever you hear it, you are back in that car with that boy and no matter how many times you hear it, it will always represent that boy. Or when you eat a meal at a restaurant, one you'd eaten so many times without realizing what it meant and then you remember the days where you sat with your Dad in some restaurant somewhere eating and talking and you just fall apart because you miss him. Or when you smell the fresh cut grass and you are back to being seventeen, laying on the lawn of a castle in some foreign country with the guy you love holding you as you talk about a future moment. When a breeze hits you the right way and you're a few years older and wiser than you were at seventeen but still a fool with your heart and you remember that guy that you were friends with first and then messed it all up by being in a relationship... and you can't help but remember the friendship and miss that because even though the relationship sucked, the friendship was good.
Sometimes, the past is still in your life. Like that ex boyfriend who became more of a friend to you than most of your so-called friends back in the day. Like a girl you barely spoke to in high school but who suddenly transformed into one of your best friends. Like the pictures of people you don't even remember their names but sit in a small box that for some reason you can't bare to throw away. Sometimes, the past helps you remember who you were and reminds you how you got to where you are now. So you reach out to someone you haven't talked to in a while and you try to make peace, only to have that door slammed in your face with an insult to go with it and you get sad for a while but you remember that you were reaching out for yourself and they aren't ready and probably never will be ready for that "forgive and forget" moment you read about in books. Sometimes, the person you never wanted to hear from again reaches out to you and you must make that choice: do you forgive them and forget the past and make new memories or do you cling to the hurt and the bad memories because for some reason letting go of something negative like that is hard and seems almost impossible to imagine that any good could come out of it. Well, I've done both those sometimes this week with members of my past. I reached out to someone who slammed the door on me and let me know that he wasn't interested without actually speaking to me and I've let someone in that I had bad feelings about for a long time based on mutual idiocy of youth. I don't regret reaching out and I don't regret forgiving, it means that I've grown into someone who deserves the life I have now.
I love my life now, married to a wonderful man who loves me and needs me in his life and puts up with my annoying quirks and lets me be myself, even if sometimes, I'm not entirely sure who that is yet, with two wonderful children who love me and make me so crazy happy, I want to burst sometimes. But sometimes, you just have to remember and remember that before you were a mother and a wife, you were a person of your own caliber, with your own identity and your own meaning to it all. And I've started to realize that I miss me.
Yes, I love being a mother. My kids mean more than anything to me. I would do anything for them, I've done everything for them. I've sacrificed so much of myself to let them have the best I could offer and I did it without question because they are my children. I love when they wrap their little arms around me and say four little words that fill my heart with so much love that it breaks: "I love you, Mommy."
And I love being a wife to my husband. He's my best friend and is the most wonderful man with the most beautiful qualities a person can possess: humility, strength, dignity, courage, honor, honesty, love. He makes us his first priority and does something with his life that I couldn't imagine having more worth. He's also one of the smartest people I've ever known (Takes his last Final before his Master's degree sometime over next week). He makes me laugh, which for me is the number one quality a man can have because I get stuck in my own head so much, he can actually take me out of it. And I will continue to make sacrifices for him too, because he'll make sacrifices for our Country and that's what our life together will always have in it: a duty to each other and our Country. He's a Soldier and I'm his wife and we will stick together throughout any sacrifice that is needed, even if we are separated by distance of body, our hearts are connected always. And I will always be proud to be his wife, because of who I was so lucky to marry.
It's just that sometimes, I miss myself. I miss knowing what I liked to do when I was alone, which I haven't been in so long with two kids and a husband. I miss hanging out with friends and talking about things that range from the stupid to the real. I miss going to a small little record store and finding an album that I'd never even heard of and listening to it as I explored a new place and saw different things. I miss spending time looking at the stars after a night of partying with friends alone on my balcony. I miss who I was when I was with friends and could just be me, Leah, a girl who didn't have labels.
I don't regret becoming a mother, but lately, the reminders of the past have reminded me that I need to find out who I am aside from mother and wife. I'm not willing to give up either of those two things, but I want me again. I need to take time for my art and for my music and for me. I need to discover who I am now. And all I know about myself these days is that I am a damn good mother and a damn good wife and those always come first but when you put so many things in front of yourself, where do you fit in?
I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, which is what I'm sure I sound like, but I know others go through this too and I just wonder how they managed to find themselves after they got lost in the wife and mother roles. How did they find out who they were outside of their families?
How do you find yourself when you'd forgotten you for so long that you've forgotten everything about yourself?
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