I'm of the opinion that life is the biggest, scariest adventure and true life makes for the best literature. There aren't any rewind buttons. You can never truly correct a mistake. You can only strive to overcome it. The beauty of mistakes is that if you look hard enough, or long enough, you'll find the lesson that's hidden inside all the hardship.
Perhaps the biggest mistake any of us can make is trying to define ourselves. None of us are just a mother, just a daughter, just an executive, or just any one thing. At the risk of sounding cliché: we are all onions. You might be a Red Onion. You might be a Yellow Onion, a Baby Onion, a Green Onion, or the onion that got boiled and came out like a stinky, slimy pile of mush, but we are all onions.
If we're all onions, then what makes us the unique beings we know we are? Our layers, of course. No two people have the same layers. You can have two children raised in the same environment, but their layers are completely different because they handled the same experiences in different ways. What may be the hardest thing for one child to endure the other will cope with in an amazingly adaptive manner.
I've spent the last six years trying to define myself. It took me writing a college paper about my “identity” to truly realize that defining one's self is a complete waste of time. In my paper I defined myself as a lesbian. Well, now I'm proving myself a liar: I'm dating a man. Yet, there are definite lesbian tendencies in my personality, but that's not all of who I am.
Before I came out and confessed my attraction to women I was just a writer. I was a misfit before that, and a daughter, and an unplanned pregnancy. I'm digressing. The point is, we are never just one thing. I believe Sherwood Anderson gave an apt name to those people who become so obsessed with one aspect of themselves or their lives that it becomes all they are. He called them “grotesques.”
Even when I was an unplanned pregnancy I was also “a miracle,” as my mother puts it. I was never just a daughter. I was also a sister, the youngest child, and a scarily independent little girl. When I thought I was just a misfit I was also a mentor to the developmentally handicapped, a B average student, and a drama queen. I have been so many things; some things I will always be, others will fade, and others will come. It doesn't change the fact that I was never truly defined by one thing. I've been called a survivor, a victim, a hopeless romantic, a hermit, a dyke, and a push over. I'm sure I've been all of these things and still am to some degree. They all make up the layers of me and at the core there is my soul, which seeks no definition.
If you define yourself by one or two things I urge you to step back and take a look at yourself. What do you do for a living? What do you do for fun? Do you have children? What about pets? Take a look at every aspect of your life and realize there is more to you that what you have limited yourself to. If you really can't think of anything that applies to you, then it may be time for a change in your life. Take some classes, write some poetry, go to the gym or the library. Do something, anything, new and exciting. Break out of your routine!
There is no excuse for making the mistake of defining, thus limiting, yourself.
