someone like me

Comparing my life to someone else's is something I do often. Often without even thinking. Without realizing that what I think are my dreams are really only envious thoughts about decisions others made. I am coveting choices that I am angry for not taking. I am angry for not coming up with those choices. For not thinking those wonderful words written by infamous poets and writers and bloggers and women my own age who can change the minds of others. I do not even think of myself as a woman. So how can I make these choices. How can I be someone that I cannot even dredge up the notion of being?

When I feel most lost, I am overwhelmed with the reality that I have to live my life and mine only. Little girls dream about growing up and being whoever they want to be. The infinity of possibility. They are told they can become their wildest dreams. They wonder what that someone will be and they are not scared. Why be afraid when you can be anything. I imagined myself smart and strong. I saw a girl who was friends with everyone. She looked like the girls I saw in magazines and on tv. She was on her way up, successful. She made her parents proud.

When I was a little older, I saw a girl that brushed away her insecurities, that moved to big cities and worked. She was independent. She was important. She was surrounded with the excitement of dreams coming true. Big things were happening for her.

Today I am unable to write about a woman. Without thinking the word 'girl' is dashed across the keyboard and I don't know why. I don't understand why I cry when I see other people, fictional people's dreams come true and I see their parents in the front row in tears of pride.

I am not the first girlwoman to feel lost and to write about their confusion of the word 'woman.' I certainly won't be the last. There have been and will be far more significant words written about this topic, subject, notion, 'phase'. About what it means to be a woman. And beyond that, what it means to grow up. To come to terms with the idea that maybe those dreams we had as children were not expectations, but only make-believe. Dreams as real as cotton candy trees and unicorns. Except that I have a hard time believing that who I wanted to be was only the fanciful reading of one of my fictional storybook. These may not have been your expectations or society's expectations of me, but they were my own. I wanted. I expected and I assumed that when I became a woman, I would be everything that mattered.

I never set a date. Everyday that passes I change my view on myself and who I am supposed to be. But I remember the expectations I set for myself and maybe this is what holds me back.

Regardless, I know that I am comparing myself to others even as I type. Whether I am good enough is not the question. Only if it matters to you. And though this page may be scattered with I's, there are others. Do not think that I am not aware of others. I see them everyday and know that as I compare myself to them, they are doing the same to other others. This will continue until the expectations have been met. This post is cryptic, I am aware of this too.

My ego leaves me with this. Move forward, do not disregard any decisions you have made but learn to make more. Choices are all that are ours. They are our legacies and our currency.

I am not trying to change the world but am expected to.