my lifespan...

i don't know who you are anymore...

 

have you ever had someone, anyone, tell you this?  it usually comes from someone who you are or have been really close to.  someone who you planned on spending your life with.  a best friend you met in kindergarten and then you go to middle school and start experimenting with different things.  your roommate in college that moves forward as a grown up and you stay just as you are a frat boy.  your husband that you vowed to spend the rest of your life with in front of the people who mean the most to you and find out that you can't keep that promise. 

 

clearly i have heard this before.  my initial response is i am the same person.  but am i really?  i have been thinking about this a lot today.  since i can't make sense of the swirling words in my head i figured i would do what i always do...write.  i know that i am different as an adult then when i was a little girl.  that is just a given, but in my adult life have i changed that much?

 

from the time i was 18 (the official age of adulthood) until i was 32 (the official age of "turn your life upside") i had the same man in my life.  i was a dutiful wife and mother.  i had a role.  i played it well.  from 32 to present time i have found a voice i didn't know i had.  i share opinions i was unaware i possessed.  i believe in myself more than i have before. 

do those things make me a different person?  or is it just the simple fact of growing up and discovering your authentic self that makes you appear to be different?  could it be that the statement isn't really a reflection on who i am but more a statement of you aren't who i need anymore?  is this to say that eventually all humans we interact with will have a lifespan? 

i have no answers, because as you know i am on a journey.  the same journey we all take, life.  i do think that our relationships change, they grow just as we do.  i don't think that people have a lifespan, but that we have to bend.  learn how to adjust to the evolving position that person holds. 

at 36 i think i am virtually the same smiley, outgoing, laugh out loud girl i have always been.  i feel i hold the same values, morals and beliefs that i was raised with.  however, i think i express myself differently than i have in my prior years and that may seem to some as drastic change.  enough change that i am unrecognizable, but i think i am just getting started.  {cheeky wink}