Hanging over my head...

I have always had a problem with consistency. I don't know why. Maybe it's because my attention span is short, but it is a struggle for me to have habits, much less good ones. In fact, the better it is for me, the harder it seems for me to habitualize it, be it exercise, eating well, or praying.

I don't like that. Actually, I can't stand it. My lack of consistency negatively affects so many things in my life-- my friendships, my schoolwork, this blog, my relationship with God (to name a few.)

This blog has been hanging over my head (along with the mold that is currently flourishing on my ceiling...). It taunts me. A reminder of (yet another) thing that I fell through on. I am sorry. Please do not take my inconsistency in posting to mean that I have not been seeing God. I have, and I do, in everything, every day.

I have been thinking about what the cause of my inconsistency is. I have come to the conclusion that it is because I do not know who I really am.

I always thought that was such a dumb thing to ask- "Who am I?" Um, hello, you're you, I'm me, what other answer are you looking for, can we move on, please?

Now, I consider- What makes me me? In searching for the answer, I find so many hollow, meaningless things. What I've realized is that I don't know who I am, because I don't know why I am.

Recently, somebody brought up that I am "different" from my sisters, in that I am singular from the other (more cohesive) three. When I was younger, I would have loved being told this. I was hell-bent on not being associated with them, because I was my own person, and too obviously amazing to be compared to anybody else. (Hah.)

But as my amazing, beautiful, smart, funny, successful sisters became more amazing, beautiful, smart, funny, and successful, I somewhere along the way decided that being like my sisters was something that I wanted. Yes, I'll take some of your sense of humor, your love for this musical instrument, your expression for this, your taste in music, and these bits and pieces of the way you look at the world.

And for the first time in years, I heard those words. "You are different from your sisters." I was taken aback. My first (shocked) thought was, "No, I'm not!" My world felt challenged. In recent years, I have built my life around being part of the set; one of four.

And then I thought about it.

I am different. I was different from the beginning, and I'm different now, because despite all the external changes I made to be more like my sisters, I remain me. And so much unhappiness (unknowingly) came from that. I was making decisions based on my sisters without any other justification (not saying this is their fault, certainly).

I think it's because I hate, and always have hated, being left out of things. Honestly, it is something that still gets me quickly upset over "nothing." When people are laughing, I have to know why. If I'm not let in on the joke, I am disappointed. But it has a deeper root. It brings back the feeling of my childhood, the feeling that I am living on the outside of a world.

I'll admit that sounds a little over-dramatic, but I am honestly telling you that in the deepest parts of my being, what I fear more that anything is being left alone, in an all-encompassing, terrifying, irreversible and uncontrollable sense of the word . I just wrote that now, without realizing it was true until the words were already there. But it's true. I will share with you a dream I've had since my childhood.

Now, realize something about me and dreams. I don't dream a lot, at least not ones that I can remember. And the ones that I do are often surreal, and totally weird. But there is one dream that stands out from all the rest, and it is the one dream that has recurred, at the very least, annually, for as long as I can remember.

The world- what's left of it- is dark. It is rocky and barren; a scene of desolation. I imagine it to be the end of the world. I am standing alone, in the bottom of a crater. And I'm calling. Not for my friends, not for my parents, but for my sisters. Calling for them, because they've left me behind somehow. My cries echo emptily in the still air.

.... oh, wonderful, this is going to make a great wedding toast when they all start getting married. Fits very neatly with the "I'm thankful you're moving out so I can have your room" story.

All joking aside, there is a tricky balance between being someone your sisters, and in the grander scheme the world as a whole, can stand, and being a person created of your own accord. I think it takes maturity to figure out, and is a scary time when you're at an age where approval is what your heart cries for more than anything else. (Gotta love those early teen years. Thank you Drake Middle School!)

And so I've realized I didn't know who I was because I hadn't accepted who I was. Without recognizing the me free from approval, influence, or regard from anyone else, I was literally blind to myself. I have to overcome that fear of being alone, and that irrational fear that if I am different, I will be left behind. (Because, ultimately (and as a bit of a tangent (wow, look at these triple parenthesis!)), when we love somebody, it is their differences from us that we are truly loving. The qualities we have in common with them we do not love because they have them, we love because we have them, and what we are loving is ourselves in them, as we all have that unfortunate tendency to love ourselves inordinately. Does that make sense?)

Now, every decision I make warrants a second look. Why I am doing this? Could it be that my failure to be consistent in something has to do with why I chose to do it in the first place?

Is my lack of consistency in this blog because I only chose to start it because it's what my sisters did? Do I really want to be doing this?

Honest answer- yes. But I need to take on reasons of my own. Because I want to share my love of God with other people. Because I want to ramble to the world, and pretend like the world is actually listening. Because it's what I do when it's 4:3o in the morning, and I can't sleep.

I see now that it's not what I do that's been bothering me, but rather, it's why I do it. And with acceptance of the fact, that yes, why thank you, I am different, I can rest easily. Though I am of a set of four, I am unique, and still have so much growing ahead of me.