Sometimes, the best made plans don’t turn out the way you imagined they would. When I was younger, I had my entire life mapped out. I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up (lawyer!), the ivy-league college I wanted to attend, the city in which I wanted to live, and what I wanted to name my future kids. I was driven, tenacious, ambitious, and I worked hard to achieve my ends. While my home life was rough and my family wasn’t what you would call “supportive” of me, I felt like I knew who I was, and who (and what) I wanted to become.
Never once did I imagine that my life wouldn’t turn out the way I envisioned it.
Fast forward ten years. I’m married to my husband, an Air Force staff sergeant at the time. I’ve just had my second child, and I am a stay-at-home mom. We had decided that I would take care of the house and kids while my husband worked – at least, for the time being. When I’m wasn’t changing diapers, wiping spit-up off my shirt, or feeding a hungry child, I was usually catching up on endless loads of laundry, sewing on new stripes (you know, before the velcro), or becoming engrossed in one of the movies that my kids have decided they must watch all day, everyday, or the world would end. I attended every special function, like a good military wife. When my second child was a little older, I started working part-time at our local commissary as a bagger to bring in some extra money when my husband was off work. I was doing well, for the most part.
Then it hit me one day out of the blue.
Fellow spouses, did you ever wake up one day and realize that you didn’t know who you were anymore? Because I did. What happened to the girl who wanted to attend the best college, take on the criminal establishment, and save the innocent? I’d worked my whole life to be one version of myself, only to end up as the total opposite. I was angry and resentful of the fact that I had given up on my dreams that I didn’t even know who the woman in the mirror who stared back at me was.
What was worse, I was disappointed that I was okay with bagging groceries for a living.
I felt like I had lost my entire identity in trying to do all of the things that were expected of me, rather than what I wanted to do. Military family life had encompassed my entire being, and I was left wondering when I would be able to be “me” again – if at all.
After the initial waves of anger and resentment subsided, I realized later that I hadn’t actually lost myself at all; I had changed. My priorities were different now – every sacrifice I had made, every experience, whether triumphant or a failure, had inherently changed me. I found that I was happy being at home with my kids, as I had the privilege of being their primary caregiver while my husband worked. I was okay with bagging groceries because I was helping my family get by. I didn’t need to save the world; I was happy right where I was. But, I still needed to get to know the woman that I had become.
Going through a period of self-discovery in my late twenties was not easy. I had to make time to get to know myself again in the midst of the hustle and bustle of my life. I had to learn about the woman that had replaced the idea of the one I had in my head for so long. Who is she? What are her dreams and aspirations? What tv shows does she like (you know, other than Octonauts and Peppa Pig)? What does she want to be when she grows up? These seem like easy questions when we are younger, but answering these when we have been engrossed in one way of life for so long is incredibly difficult. I discovered that the answers to questions even as simple as these had evolved.
I also had to break away from the notion that I had to do everything all of the other wives were doing, and that it was okay to just be me.
Here I am, in my early thirties, and I am still learning new things about myself everyday. I’ve come to the conclusion that learning about myself will be a lifelong process. Life continues to be busy, but I have made it my personal mission to carve out time for myself everyday – whether it’s five minutes or an hour – to do the things that I enjoy, and that make me feel like “me.” The truth is, I never lost myself. Even when I was busy, I was finding “me,” something that I continue to do every single day, no matter how busy life gets or where we PCS to next.