Waiting For Me

Someone once said that I have “the patience of a saint” while I was working as a cashier, if you have ever worked with the public you know that patience is a trait that can save your sanity. Well, patience paired with the ability to never take things too personal, and/or the ability to forget everything that happened from clock-in to clock-out. At the time all I said was thank you, but now I realize this trait is more of a skill and it’s a skill I’ve been honing most of my life.

I’ve spent a lot of time waiting for the next step, waiting to go from middle school to high school, from high school to college, from college to the ‘real world’. I waited impatiently to move into my own apartment, then I waited impatiently for each move that followed. (3, soon to be 4 or 5 moves in the span of two years) I’ve rushed through my life so impatiently I almost forgot to live it, but luckily I’ve had amazing friends and family that remind me to enjoy myself once in a while. Now that my 24th birthday is days away, I’m realizing that in all my patiently impatient waiting I never took the time to become someone.

I feel like everyone but me is someone; someone with values, hobbies, a career, general life goals, you know, a PLAN. Other people have direction, a regular gas station, a favorite movie, a favorite song, a favorite person, a dish they make better than anyone, a ‘thing’ that’s just theirs. Other people have these things, I do not have these things, or even one thing really. Now that I am in the ‘real world’, I’m struggling to find where I fit. How can I fit in if I don’t even have a thing that I do? What have I been doing all these years? Just waiting…

I’m waiting again now, waiting to move back home, away from the future I so impatiently waited for, right back to where it all began. Turns out 24 years of waiting doesn't make a person, but 24 years of living might have. After all this waiting I went into the ‘real world’ without a sense of self, without boundaries, without hobbies. Just me, my dogs, and the guy that loves the me who doesn’t even exist. Now, I’m waiting to go home and actually create myself, to find myself isn't the right phrase because I haven't really existed yet. I’ve just been waiting to become someone without realizing I should have been building her all along.

I say that like it’s an easy thing to do, like creating a person is so simple everyone else has done it without even realizing. Like I should be able to make up for 24 years of not subconsciously becoming me by hyperfocusing on forming an identity for a couple weeks. I doubt it works like that, I doubt that I could do that even if it was scientifically possible. I have a very hard time living in the present. That being said, the present has been a hard time for me for most of my life. I can’t think of many chapters of my life where I haven't justified my questionable decisions by saying “I was in a bad place” or “bear with me I don’t know where my head is right now.”

I know life is hard for me and everyone else, even for the people who have formed themselves so well. I don’t write this to justify my lack of self with circumstances, but rather so that the me that will come back and read this when she exists can forgive the years of neglect. I hope she can forgive the years of neglect, I don’t know if she will be forgiving. She might not even want to remember all the years of almost being a person, she might be scared that making peace with an almost person could invite her to almost exist next time she finds herself in a bad place. It’s very easy to live in the past or the future, she may be so understanding of that fact that she falls back into the comfort of watching her life from the sideline.

I am waiting to become myself now, but I’m also wondering what she will think of all this not me has and hasn't done. Will she be angry for the delay, grateful to develop after getting a sense of the world? It could be an advantage to build a player for this game now that she knows the world isn’t fair, isn’t always kind but isn’t always cruel either.

I hope that she is kind, I hope she is forgiving, but mostly I hope she has a lust for life. Before I realized I was supposed to become somebody through hard work, I used to really like the anticipation of wondering who I would become, now the uncertainty is a little more daunting. I hope she has a favorite restaurant, a comfort show, a song she absolutely never skips. I hope she never gets bored, always has something to do and time to relax after she’s done it. I hope she’s confident, generous, and I hope she finally lets herself feel her emotions without looking down on them. I hope she finds things to fight for, things that make living this hard life a little easier.

I hope she finds a place in this world, I hope I find a place in this world. I hope I can realize that I was me this whole time, just a watered down version, with purposeful reflection I will concentrate myself into Emma. Just Emma, not a hint of Emma. I want to be Emma like a mimosa is a mimosa, not champagne and orange juice. I want all the pieces of me to come together and make a whole person. I'm missing a few pieces now but I hope I find enough of them to at least get a picture of who I am. For now, I’m still waiting.