It kind of feels like when I'm home, my heart swells to sizes that are not even capable of fitting inside of my chest. This is my childhood, and this is where I can find and make sense of myself.
Christmas is rapidly approaching and my brother gets home tomorrow, and by the end of the week, my entire immediate family will be together for the first time since..I don't know..maybe July. It's been kind of a long time, and I guess I've really missed them.
But, after a few days of everyone being home, most of them are going back again. My sister is going to have to go back to her job in NYC. My other sister is going to visit her boyfriend in Alabama. In a few weeks, my brother and I will have to go back to school, too. For some reason, I just feel like I need to freeze time and run in mid-air for awhile. Like I've got all these figurative pounds that I've gained over the past few months, and I can't shed them unless I take the time to let them go. I want to just keep running and running because I can't seem to shake this weird feeling that pulls at the bottom of my stomach. But it's not like I'm upset.
I was thinking about how so often, especially when I'm at school, I feel as if I have no purpose. Not that people don't need me, but that I just don't know me, and people don't know me, and my purpose gets lost or misconstrued.
"What am I supposed to do when the best part of me was always you?"
I've always defined myself by what other people think of me. I find myself through the things I do for other people, or the friends I make, or the way that certain people can understand me. But none of those are my purpose.
Yet to be honest, I don't think that I have no purpose. Far from that: I think I've just been toying with too many of them. I have so many purposes, and yet, I've lost sight of all of them.
I have the purpose of being a friend. That's the purpose that I always keep most on the surface, because I care so much about people and making their lives better that I make being a friend the most important thing.
I have the purpose of being a daughter and a family member (sibling, niece, granddaughter). And especially lately, I've come to know that that means occasionally doing things that are not for me, but for my parents. It means going out of your way to see relatives, and visit awkwardly with people in your family you haven't seen in awhile. It means giving of yourself in a friend-ish way. With those things that are obligations, make them choices; it's so much more rewarding.
I have the purpose of following my career path and following my passions. I am meant to use my passions and my life itself to teach people and to eventually find myself in a future that uses me to my greatest potential. Even though sometimes I might feel discouraged or useless, or even scared of the things I feel called to do, I know it's one of my many purposes.
I also have the purpose of being faithful. Not just to the aspects of my life that require commitment, but to my God. Even though a lot of people know how important my faith is to me, it is the only reason that I can have any purpose. Even though sometimes I can't always see it, or can't always hold onto it as strongly as I'd like to..I know that my faith and my purpose comes from God and that I would not be capable of being much of anything without it.
I have a purpose to be Julie. And this is my greatest purpose. All of those other things that I find purpose in are found only through me choosing to wake up each day and be myself. From me waking up each day and choosing the things that comprise myself, not the things that please other people. I have so much beauty and completeness simply in myself, that without the me that I am, or that I am constantly striving to be, I wouldn't be much of anything.
But I think that when I'm home, I swell up. I am so aware of what figurative shoes I wear and where I fit and who I love and what I deserve and how not to be selfish, and I just swell. And sometimes the swelling hurts, especially because when I go back to school and I'm so "swollen" of myself, so to speak, I don't know how to be me. I don't fit into the shape that is myself. This is because Dayton is forming a new shape and sometimes I try to fit my overly swollen North Canton self into the shape that is the Julie of Dayton. They are different and the same person all at once. I still need both of them, and I probably always will.
I feel overwhelmed, and swollen, but I am reminded of what my true purpose is.
And I just want to enjoy now while I can.
A little plug for life: even though death and illness sometimes come unexpectedly, or come in and ruins our plans..it reminds us we don't get to make the plans. God, the greatest planner of life, makes them for us.
My planning for the end of December 2010, and 2011 in general are open to being written.
I'm giving up the pen, and taking up my purpose.
I'm reminding myself I'm Julie, and starting from there.
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