Being Thankful for Who I Am

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.” 

― Ellen Bass

I've been struggling with the deepest sense of insecurity in the past few months.  I don't know why, I've never considered myself to be the painfully insecure type, I've always considered myself for be (thankfully) the dense type, the one who is blissfully unaware of how the rest of the world thinks or if that's not the case, I was able to dismiss any negative vibes before they can bother me. 

However, a deeper sense of insecurity hit me a few months before graduating law school, which could be attributed to the fact that I was nearing the end of a stage in my life and entering another stage which is new and uncertain. The insecurity is still there, although going through it made me reflect on the importance of being thankful for who I am. I Googled this phrase and the more popular search result is "being thankful for what you have' which is not surprising I guess, but it also makes a bit of sense to be thankful for what we are, as opposed to what we have. 

I am at an age when I am starting to accept that this is what I am, that this is the result of the loves and hurts and all the experiences that make up the years of my life, and I am actually learning to be OK with it. I've seen those movies where the character says, "This is me, get used to it" but this is actually the first time that I finally understood enough to relate.

Being comfortable in our own skin is probably something we develop and become good at as we grow older. There will still be instances when we may feel the urge to be comfortable in somebody else's, but learning how to love our own skin and learning how to rock our own stories, no matter how boring or mundane or uninspiring it may seem right next to the colorful stories of others, feels surprisingly better, probably because we are giving ourselves the permission to follow our own path, on our own pace. 

And there it is, another week almost over.

Happy Saturday, everyone!