Be yourself.

All the things i read about starting a blog emphasize being yourself.

How do i be myself?  I dont exactly know anymore.  Somewhere between growing up, high school, college, marriage, having a baby and now... i lost myself.

I think it started when i was a little girl.  I was really really hyper, yep i used to jump all over my family and run around the house.  I would climb up our door jams like a monkey, and i used to wear a summer dress that buttoned all the way up (top to bottom)- but instead of wearing it like a real dress, i would wear it like a cape and run all over the house (yep literally run).

vanessa, lauren

I used to go into the back yard and play with the water hose,  I pretended that it was raining and i would get soaking wet and then have to yell from the back door (to my mom) that i was wet and she had to bring me a towel or i would freeze to death.  I jumped off the wall by our alley with a trash bag over my head hoping that one day it would catch and i would float down slowly like i was sky diving.  I played with barbies well into my teens, and i would wrestle my dad on the floor of our living room.

Now most of these things sound kinda normal, but one day for some reason ( i dont even remember what i was doing) but my mom told me i had to stop being so annoying or else nobody would want to be my friend.  Yep. Sad i know.  Sadness aside, thats when i realized being me wasnt good enough.  Or at least good enough to the outside world.  So i did what anybody would have done.  I played it cool.  I was quiet around others so that i wouldnt make stupid comments.  I changed how i acted just enough.  But over the years i always remembered that i had to stop being so annoying.  (I know that my mom meant what she said as just a comment aimed towards whatever annoying thing i was doing to her at the time, but that has always stuck in my head.)

So people were always at arms distance- little did i know i was pushing them away by keeping them at arms distance.  And now, when i look on facebook, my heart pangs a little everytime i see my "friends" getting together and im never invited.  When people i know have these inside jokes that i was never a part of, i feel hurt inside because i thought we were friends, apparently not.  I asked a girl once why we werent friends anymore (you know as a joke to someone that you havent seen in a long time...) she aswered back with a scathing "well i gave you the chance to be my friend but you never took it..."  I never knew i was being tested... but apparently i failed.

Maybe realizing that i am a bad friend, that i am lucky to have my husband beside me, and maybe that will help me relearn who i  am and that its ok to be annoying every once in a while.

Its ok to be me, whoever i am.  My Heavenly Father loves me, my family loves me.  Its ok for me to love me.