Pieces.

It feels like an eternity has passed since I sat down and wrote my heart out. I always feel like things comes in waves. Sometimes a writing wave hits and writing is the only way to sort it all out and sometimes I am more of a thinker and writing seems like an unapproachable task. The waves make me wonder if anyone can ever really just be static in life. Can a person just float among the waves in static existence? I can't.  
​I have a tendency to become unhappy or angered with my inability to be consistent. The consistent thing in my life has always been my uncanny ability to be inconsistent. Knowing that I would like being around people every hour of the day for a few weeks and then finding myself in an antisocial state where I needed to be alone  used to eat me alive. Which was I? Outgoing or reserved? Or being a calm and collected person who was ready to take on the world, and the next week, someone that could hardly step out of the house because of some paralyzing anxiety that couldn't be understood. Which was I then? Calm and collected or anxious? I especially found it strange when I looked in the mirror and it nearly felt as though I didn't recognize the person who was staring back at me. I have literally spent years compiling my thoughts around this whole idea. The idea of "who I am" and what it means to have an identity. I always thought that it had to be some static thing that I would always be able to draw on when I felt lost in my own life. My motto was to ask myself every morning who I wanted to be and then go out and be that person. But, who is to know who a person wants to be in any given circumstance? I found often that I would think of one "ideal me" that I wanted to be and then find the ideal unattainable. A sense of irrational guilt would then follow. I did that so many times that I lost count.
The older I get and the more that I learn about life and myself and people, the less I believe in the idea of a fixed state of being and I don't think it's particularly fair to beat myself up over the lack of consistency that I have always felt. I change all of the time and, on some level, so does everyone else. Perhaps some people just really fight that inevitable change in order to feel comforted by the knowledge of who they are at any given time. I used to be one of those people. But now I'm not. I don't find fighting change comforting. If I write everyday this week and next week I cant put two words together, then I accept that and to me that acceptance is a relief. I never knew how to accept myself for who I was at any given moment in my life because I was taught from such a young age that I will "discover" who I am someday. Like it will happen once and then I will just know for the rest of my life. The thing about me that I know for sure is that I don't accept that idea. I have never "discovered myself." I discover myself everyday. I surprise myself all of the time. I've found pieces of myself in books and in movies and in grocery stores and in other people. I grow even when I feel like I am stuck. I have bloomed out of cracks of cement and on the sides of mountains and I've met people who grew themselves from nothing but a gust of wind and a little sunshine. Some wise person said that life is like a puzzle and when you are born you have all the pieces, and growing up is putting them together. Then, one day when its all over, the pieces fit together and you're left with the masterpiece that is your life. I can't accept that either. We don't have all of the pieces when we are born. We go looking and we find them all of the time. You give pieces of yourself away to people you love and sometimes they return them altered. Sometimes you don't get them back at all. Sometimes you lose them.  Sometimes, you find pieces that don't fit right but you hold onto them for the sake of becoming whole. Chances are, when its the end of the road, you'll be missing some pieces and some will be worn out and torn. It doesn't sound pleasant, I know. But, it is because imperfection is the beauty of life. You don't get an obvious masterpiece. It isn't a miraculous transformation. It is your perception that gets to decide whether your life was a masterpiece. That isn't on any god or any other person. It certainty isn't on your parents. That's on you. Life is what you make it. You are whoever the hell you want to be. You can do whatever you wish with your pieces and you can find them wherever you wish to look. Don't search for the pieces of you to merely "discover" who you are. Create yourself. Grow into who you want to be. Create the life you want, and when it's all over, make the decision to love it for all of its imperfections.

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