A search for...something

Oftentimes I wonder why I haven’t found myself yet. 31 and I feel like I am finally coming into my own, but how am I to know really. And the fact that I have to question whether or not I've found myself, whatever that means, also shows that I may have not found myself.

In my current relationship though, I feel more at ease and have easily fallen into the wife-mother-woman paradox, more or less, though the wife part is technically girlfriend but I feel as if I've now been married for 10 years! My first relationship was all first everything's so there wasn't much time to figure anything out. The second relationship was, well, I don't really know what that was. It was me on the rebound searching for someone to love me with stars in my eyes and blinders to cheaters on. Words falling out of an untruthful mouth upon trusting ears. That's what that was. This one, well this one has been a flurry of partying, hangovers, drugs and sobering up. So now is the good part where we can actually relax and just be in the relationship, so to speak. Basically, I couldn't be happier at the moment.

There is still something tugging at the back of my mind though. The loss of my self in all this mothering, girlfriending, managing shit.

Through all this "who am I" shit, I’ve figured out what my problem is. At the peak of my teenage-hood I was impregnated. It was the second semester of my senior year as I was really coming into my own. I graduated, 7 months pregnant, got married to my high school sweetheart and had my son. Three and a half years later, in the midst of our seperation, I became with child again.

Note to self: never console an ex over a dead relative with your vagina.

9 months later, my daughter was born. I was 22. Having just started on a sexual quest I was abrubtly shoved back into the screaming world of motherhood. Or at least more so than I was before. Strapped down with two kids and a husband, how is one to find what you want to be? You're hard to find amongst cries of “Mommy, I’m hungry!”, “Mommy wipe my ass!”, “Mommy, I want, I want, I want!” what’s a mother to do, but delve into the role the universe so obviously wanted me to star in and try, hard as it may be, to embrace it. Thirteen years later, as I write this, I still wonder, “Who am I?"

Although given that my youngest is almost in her double digits, age wise, I do believe that in 9, hopeully, short years I will be left to my own devices and my lifelong search for self as the kiddos embark on their own adventures in horrorland on a quest to find themselves.

All I can say is, I’m as lost as the rest of you, but I'm happy, so that counts for something, right? Right?