She is me…

Sometimes I tell stories from my twenties, and it almost feels like I’m looking down on someone else.

I see this young woman trying so hard to navigate a life that nobody around her really understood.

She carried so much on her own.

She stopped explaining herself because it seemed easier than constantly trying to convince people that what she was experiencing was real.

And when I look at her now, I don’t judge her.  I feel an overwhelming sadness for everything she carried alone.

And then, for a moment, I allow myself to acknowledge that she isn’t someone else.

She is me…

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me…

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Today’s post came from a place I don’t visit very often.

Every now and then I’ll write something that catches in my own throat. Not because I’ve only just remembered it, but because I’ve finally allowed myself to feel it.

When I look back over my life, there are different versions of me at different ages who all seem to have one thing in common.

They were carrying far more than they should have had to carry alone.

Sometimes it’s the twenty-one-year-old trying to navigate frightening health issues while feeling misunderstood.

Sometimes it’s the woman sitting on the floor after a relationship fell apart, believing she’d just lost her chance at the life she’d hoped for.

Different stories.

The same feeling.

For years, I looked back at those moments almost as though I was watching someone else’s life. I could feel overwhelming compassion for the woman I was looking at, yet somehow never stopped to acknowledge that she wasn’t someone else.

She was me.

I think that’s what today’s post was really about.

Not the events themselves.

But finally allowing myself to grieve for the woman who had to keep carrying herself through them.

I don’t live there anymore.

I’m genuinely happy with the life I’ve built.

But every now and then I find myself looking back with a tenderness I never allowed myself to feel at the time.