WHO AM I?

Do we really know who we are and what drives us? I have thought of this question for sometimes now and I can say for sure I’m at a loss about a definite answer.

I was born to a conservative, simple and religious family. Being the born of the family, I was brought up under the shadows of older siblings and was expected to emulate them in their actions. I have lived my life with the pressure of being expected to be like so and so and not to be like so and so. All my achievements and failures were measured in comparison to my siblings and in so doing robbing me of what would have defined me as an individual. I sometimes wish I rebelled and did what I wanted but that wasn’t in the equation at that time. Picture this, from my primary school days, I was under pressure to lead in my class, number one was the only acceptable option in all my exams. The reason being my elder brother was too. For my high school education, I was admitted in a provincial school that though it was good, it wasn’t my choice; my brother was admitted in the same school two years earlier and thus I was expected to follow his footsteps. When I was first caught drunk, I was reprimanded not because drinking was bad, hell everyone in the family did it, and the reasoning behind my woes was that I was too young and my brothers waited until they were 18 years to do it, I was 16 at the time. The list goes on to include my sex life, mode of dressing, friends and almost everything I did.

Now to the issue at hand, what does all this have to do with who I am today? And the answer to this question is everything. With this I mean I was molded to become like my elder siblings and not to be me. My parents did this not with malice or ill motives but because they thought it was the right thing to do and thus I don’t hold it against them. I love them and would do anything to please them and also my sibling. It was the sacrifice that though I knew would affect me later, I willingly took it and with not regret I did all that was expected of me.

Now the independent me has come to terms with the facts that I really don’t know who I am and what I want in life. With this realization I’ve been in the path of rediscovering myself and for the last few months I believe I have made considerable progress concerning many aspects of my life. On a positive note, I have realized that my life could have been worse if I had the kind of freedoms I yearned for, lets be honest, I could be naughty given the chance and if it were not for the “spare the rod, spoil the child” stance that my parents had, there isn’t anything I could not have done. I owe my moral uprightness to my parent and I can’t change anything about that, maybe try to be an even better person. I also learned to be responsible and caring to the plights of other people, this sometimes feels like a big weight on my shoulder in cases where I will give to others especially family all that I got in terms of time, finance and my entire being and leave myself with nothing and all I get from doing all this is a compilation of more responsibilities and high expectations of what I should offer them next. But despite the lack of any positive return for my efforts, it feels nice knowing that I made a different in somebody’s life and whether or not the person acknowledge that is of no importance to me.

I have lived my life trying to please other people so much that I forgot that I had my life to live and me to please. Those who really knew me can attest to this fact and though I try to front a “I don’t care” face with some of my actions, I always find myself bending to the demands of others. I have realized that I got one life to live and thus I should live my life for me, myself and put my needs first before I do those for other people. I should do what pleases and fulfills me and not what pleases the society and that I shouldn’t apologize for it. I’ve also realized that I should not be judged for mistakes done by others and that in my life I will make mistakes, but they are mine to make and learn from them, I am not perfect nor do I try to be. So to all those trying to make perfection out of me, you have your lives to live and I got mine too. Let me be.

The final issue I am going to tackle is about love and acceptance, having grew up not knowing who I really am, I have had this feeling that I have to please everyone for them to acknowledge me leave alone accept me. You have no idea how hard it is to live your life feeling worthless and unacceptable. About love, I always had the love of my family but I always had the fear that should I do something against their expectations, it could be taken away from me. I still do have this feeling sometimes but at least I’ve it under control and incase it comes to be, I believe I can live with it. I’m still skeptical whether the other kind of love exists in the world. Just recently I had somebody who gave me the reason to believe that it exists and after falling hard and putting my entire being to make it work, I got wounded so much that I even lost the will to leave. The pain was worse than physical pain; I became numb and withdrawn to everything in my life. Now I am cautious about putting myself in such situation again and as for love, I really don’t know.