It’s Time To Be The Me I Need To Be
It’s that time of year again. The time of new beginnings and New Year’s resolutions that we have every intention of following through with. It is the time where we look to the new year with hopes and dreams for our future. This is what I do every year, and somehow, I put my own goals and dreams aside to help others with theirs.
As a wife, mother, and grandmother, my family is my everything, and their happiness is most important to me. In trying to make everyone happy, I tend to put my own happiness aside. This is totally my doing, but what I have realized is that I end up becoming resentful and unhappy because of it.
I am not unique in this. I know many women who put their own dreams aside to make their family happy. We are taught at an early age that we are caregivers- it is our job to care for our family. According to Thought Catalog, “There is an (often subconscious) mentality that tells women that they are here to serve — and this notion shapes so much of their lives. It lays the foundation for what they feel they deserve, and how much they allow themselves to be who they are, as opposed to who they feel they need to be for others.”
What we are never taught is how important it is to take care of ourselves. It never fails that I put the needs of my family above what is important to me, and find myself rushing to get my own things done. What is normally something I would love to do ends up feeling like a chore to me. I don’t enjoy it as much as I should. I either feel guilty or so completely stressed about getting it done. I would like this year to be different.
Normally, at the end of each year, I look back and see all I wanted to accomplish, yet failed to achieve much of it, so this year I plan to pay more attention to my own happiness than I have in the past. Now, I am not saying that it will be all about me this year because I already know I couldn’t do that. I just mean that I am not getting any younger, and it is crazy to keep spending my time wasted on my unachieved dreams.
If I am being completely honest, I have used more years than I have left. I am in my late 40s, and the reality of getting older is panicking me quite a bit. I don’t want to look back one day and see all of my unachieved dreams with regret.
So, this year, my biggest goal is to say no occasionally without letting the guilt eat me alive. I want to teach myself that its okay to take some time for myself, even if I am just going to sit and read or write. I want to do the things I love without putting them last and really start enjoying them again. I want to experience new things and re-experience the things I used to do but haven’t in so long.
I want to be able to feel like myself again. I want to have interests outside of my family and have conversations that aren’t revolved around them. I want to feel like me. The me I know is hiding somewhere deep inside me. I want to feel happy again.
