Just Me

Funny how things strike you or I guess I should say it is funny how things strike me. I’m pretty sure that I get struck by things in an entirely different way than other people do. But then again, I’m not like everybody else (nor are you by the way) so of course I get struck differently.

Have you ever wanted to be somebody else? Maybe it was for just a moment or maybe it was for a lifetime. Maybe you wanted to be her or him or whoever you thought had the perfect life, or at least a life a little bit better than you. Maybe it wasn’t anyone specific; it was just someone, someone else, someone other than you. Maybe it was the “you” that you thought you were, or the “you” that others think you are, or the “you” that you’ve always wanted to be. Whatever, whoever, it was just somebody else. Not you or at least not the “you” that you are right now.

I’ve been that person. I’ve always been that person. Wanting to be somebody else. Wanting to be the kid that got invited to all the sleepovers, that was picked first in kickball, and that was that special student that all the teachers adored. Wanting to be the girl in high school that was so perfectly confident in herself, not arrogant, but comfortable with who she was. Wanting to be the woman who had found that all her dreams had come true, she was who she pictured herself to be as a woman. Wanting to be comfortable in my own skin, in my own personality, wanting to be what everyone else expected me to be, what I expected me to be. Wanting all that I though I lacked, all that I thought I needed. Wanting to be somebody else and yet still wanting to be me, just the “me” that wasn’t who I was at the moment. The “me” that was what I could be, what I should be.

I have a feeling this is a struggle for many. I hope that I’m not the only one who looks at herself in the mirror and wonders what it would be like to be that person, somebody else.

Maybe this is a longing planted deep within my heart that has purpose. Because I don’t look at another person and wish that I was them. Oh, sometimes I wish I had what they have but I still want to be me, just a different me. A better me. The “me” that others see me as and then sometimes I want to be nothing like the me that others see. It is such a conflicting thought, to want to be all the good that others see, to meet their expectations of you, and yet to want to be nothing like the parts of you that are offensive to others, that hurt others. I want to be the best version of me, but that is somebody else, it isn’t the “me” that I am right now.

But then I wonder if I will ever be content with the “me” of the moment. Is that longing to be somebody else planted inside me to draw me closer to the “me” that I am supposed to be? Is that lack of satisfaction, lack of contentment, of comfortableness a yearning that pushes me to change, or more, to be open to change>

Can I recognize that the “me” that I am right now is the “me” that is needed for right now and yet the “me” that I want to be, might be the “me” for tomorrow. Maybe wanting to be somebody else, to be somebody at all, is really a desire to be me after all.

Maybe somewhere in the midst of all the visions of me: Who I want me to be, who others want me to be, who they seem me as, who God sees me as, who God is changing me to be. Somewhere in the middle of all that there I am.

Just me.

Changing, growing, learning. Changing not into somebody else altogether but from me to me.

So maybe I do want to be somebody else, to be somebody, maybe I want to be me. A me that I don’t know yet, a me that I see off in the distance.

Just thinking out loud here. I’m me, I do thinks like this.