Finding Myself

A journey into self realization

For dinner tonight I had more than my usual plate of cheap Chinese food from my dining hall. As usual I ate dinner with a good friend of mine after we left our poetry class. I was in a particularly introspective mood, and asked my friend a hard question to answer, and she gave me a response that was hard to hear. 

I have been going through a hard time in my life, where I have begun to lose sight of who I am, and who I want to be. This routine of me losing and rediscovering myself is one that I am becoming more accustomed as I mature. Tonight I reached out for a little help over dinner. I asked my friend, “How do I come across to people?” I was hoping for a little insight on if I am who I thought I was, and as it turns out, I’m not.

My friend was quite for quiet sometime as she sat and chewed on how she was going to tell me what she thought of me. Now, I was careful about choosing who it was that I was going to get this information from; I knew I had to ask this one friend in particular because she would tell me the truth, bluntly and honestly. 

When she was finally able to answer me she began with telling me the basics on if I come across intelligently, and if I was as intelligent as I think I am. I pressed her to see if I my honestly came across as bitchy, and her response matched how I viewed myself. She then throws me a curve ball and talks to me about how I handled my recent incident with a guy I had been with this term.

She began to tell me what she thought of who I am at my core, and how this effects what I do, and how I think. I was asked what I thought about myself at a core; why I do what it is that I do? I responded by saying that I viewed myself as a performer in every aspect of my life. Everything that I do, I do to either impress someone else, or entertain someone.

She smiled and nodded along with me, as if to say that I hadnt even scratched the surface of who I am at my core. She told me that the reason that I am so concerned with having a man is because I am constantly craving validation from all those around me…

Now this thought had risen in my mind once before when I thought about why I strive to succeed academically, and that reason is for the validation of my father. I was under the belief that I was such a people person was to better the lives of those around me altruistically. This notion of constantly being in search of validation provoked in me the realization that I am a people person because I need the validation of those around me to feel good about myself… And that the reason that I crave relationships is because I need the validation of a man to feel as though I am worth a damn…

I guess that this just proves that I have no idea who I am. I tell people all the time with complete confidence in my answer that, yes, of course I know who I am, at least in this exact moment. This one conversation with a good friend has proven to me that I have a lot to learn about myself. 

Let the learning begin!

Posted 10 hours ago — 1 note