Remembering me

After I open my eyes each morning, it takes me a moment to remember who and what and why I am. I know I’m alive but I’ve forgotten my whole story.

Glennon Doyle

I often find myself stuck in a trance. I’m staring into the distance contemplating. Everything and nothing at once. 

“Abby, what are you thinking about?”, my husband always asks me. I genuinely don’t know how to answer that the majority of the time.

Throughout my childhood, I was given a handful of scripts and templates to live by. 

The evangelical Christian, the obedient daughter, the selfless friend, the girlfriend who saved sex for marriage, the perfect athlete, the one who had it all together, etc.

For so long, I didn’t know if any of those were truly me. But out of survival, I worked endlessly to be the best at each of them.

All of these identities have been pretty tangled up for the majority of my life. I was codependent to their roles and driven by their expectations of me. I didn’t think I was good or worthy without them.

I was always existing in an environment that shielded me from alternate perspectives and reaffirmed the beliefs I was taught.

Which made it second nature to stay stuck in that echo chamber of sameness and agreement that we all masked as connection as I moved through life.

My questions and doubts were rarely met with empathy and curiosity by others, but with fear and shame and an urgency to allow those roles to lead me rather than me lead them.

As a young girl, I ached for something more. I was very intrigued by the thought of what my truest role in the world was and would become. Something that felt more real to me. Even saying my name out loud felt funny because I didn’t feel like my own person yet.

The expectations of who I was supposed to be swirled in my brain more often than the knowing of who I wanted to be did.

Thank God YouTube wasn’t around yet because on more occasions than one, I would set up a video camera (in the tripod), sit down at my desk, and record myself talking. As if people were listening and watching me in real-time. I would describe my day, talk through the current happenings of my life, all the drama with my fellow sixth grade friends, and maybe end with some sort of life lesson I gathered as I spoke. I would do this for hours.

Being on my own felt both lonely and safe. I could think and wonder, away from the noise and judgment that never allowed me to get to conclusions independently. I have two older brothers so what they wanted me to be was more appealing to me than who I wanted to be.

“Who are you talking to?”, they’d chuckle as they sat and listened outside my bedroom door. “Leave me alone!”, I’d scream.

Looking back on those times now, I laugh. Because it is funny to picture myself doing this. Who was I talking to? I’m not sure.

I think more than anything, I was just talking to myself. I needed me to hear me. To know my own voice. 

I desperately wanted to matter in my own skin — not outside of it like I was used to. 

Soon enough, those recorded ramblings transitioned into journal entries (thank God). That became my safe place.

There continued to be this intrinsic need in me to re-live and process what I’d seen, felt, heard, and witnessed. 

To remember.

There still is.

And that ache to witness myself has stayed alive.

Fast forward to today.

As time has passed, a lot has happened. There were critical moments of asking myself, “when did I actually choose all of this?”

That’s when I was met with the harsh reality that I didn’t choose it. I was handed it. I was expected to desire it. And that realization fractured the life I was living in so many ways.

So much of who I thought I was (or should be) changed. The perfect storyline of what I thought my life would look like has been turned on its head. It broke down to be something I was left with the pieces of instead of living in. Pieces I would soon have to stare into and determine if I wanted to take with me or leave behind as I built the version of me I actually wanted to be — the one who would feel whole in her own skin instead of outside of it.

It has been the work of my life (and will continue to be) to separate these identities into their rightful, most healthy place. To deeply examine the systems and hierarchies and biases that made me.

I genuinely don’t think I would have ever seen the other side if it weren’t for some serious breaking points that tore me wide open in my twenties, that simply did not allow healing without the discomfort of deconstructing the paradox that was my conditioning.

When I get lost in those trances, it feels like I’m out of body watching myself. Wondering how I got here. In this particular moment. How that girl who was talking to the camera in the tripod got to this moment 20 years later. And how many different versions of myself I’ve been in between.

When you untether and deconstruct who the world (society, family, culture, expectations, religion, etc.) taught you to be, the road can feel long and unending. And if you’re anything like me, so many seasons of that reckoning felt like I was losing myself completely. Or maybe I didn’t even know myself to begin with. Either way, it felt like being whole and at peace with my life would never come. I’d never get to touch that or rebuild it.

I (sometimes daily) have to remind myself that I’m not living in the moments where I feel frozen anymore. I got through them. I’m still me.

Maybe that’s really the answer I’m seeking in each moment of wondering.  

Am I still me? Is my life true or am I frozen in a collection of false identities again?

And then I sink back into my body and blink. And I remember…

I’m Abby. I’m married. I’m a mom. I’m alive. My life didn’t end when I thought it was over. It kept going. I kept going. I remember last night. I remember all the nights. I’m not frozen. I want to be where I am. I chose it. I worked for it.

I am aware. I am awake. I am in my body. 

My daughter is sleeping in my arms. My husband is laying next to me. My same dog who has been beside me in my darkest moments is still here, cuddled up at my feet. 

I am Abby. 

I belong to me. I know my whole story and I’m still here.

Not only am I here…I’m living the life I didn’t even think to dream up. It’s that good. It’s not the perfect template I was taught that it’s supposed to be. It’s better. More real. Built on honesty and vulnerability and freedom.

I am enough.

I am enough at 31. 

I was enough at 23. 

And I was more than enough at 10. 

I always mattered.

I didn’t need the world (or the recorded videos that would never be posted anywhere) to know me.

I needed to know me.

To remember that I was awake. Not just a passerby of my own life. I was the main character that deserved to write her own story, not blend into the background of someone else’s life they chose for me.

I never needed the world to know my place in it. 

I needed to know my place inside of me, in my own skin, from my own lens.

That’s what those moments of pause are reminding me.

So, tomorrow I will wake up. Not anxious or confused. Not regretful or unsure. Not feeling the need to relive the pain of who I once was or what my life was supposed to look like.

I will wake up whole.

And I will remember that every version of me got me here. 

To this day, to this very moment.

And I will smile when I remember that I am Abby.

“I hope 

when you come home to yourself

there are flowers lining the front porch 

that were left from all the women 

you were before”

@maiapoetry