mea culpa

I am not a strong person. I pretend I am, and I can play the part as well as anyone, but in reality, I am not. In order to figure out where I should be I need to identify where I am and call it by name. I go along to get along. With everyone. I concern myself more with making the other people happy than I do with myself happy. I live to please the rest of the world. Even if it means denying who I am in the process. I recently found myself in a situation where I bent and twisted in order to create the person I thought that person wanted me to be. Maybe if I could be what ihe needed he would stop acting like he was. You know, it really doesn't work that way. I completely lost myself for a few days in the process. I have been given a few days of quiet in my own head, as there is no one in the house but for me and the kids for the next week. Its an interesting place to be in, as the kids have been in bed for some time and I've had nothing but the quiet I have so craved in my own head. I'm not happy, but that statement isn't enough to describe where I find myself. I'm not happy and I haven't been for a really really long time. I can't live like this anymore. As many of you know I have been looking for work for sometime without a great deal of success. Even as I look I can only think..."What's the point?" I have lived to make my mom and kids happy but its gotten me only to this place. My voice, my light is silent. I know, I feel I am meant for something different, but I don't know what it is. I am not strong enough. Those people closest to me will debate this as I have survived some ugliness in my life, but I see that as a further example that I'm right. Those experiences color my reactions to the world even now. I lived guided by what might be, a twinge of fear that infects my every interaction with those around me. I'm not a strong person, in most occasions I will give someone the answer I think they are looking for in order to keep the peace. Living under some peoples thumb for too long has poisoned my ability to fight back. Keep the peace, go along to get along,give them what they want. I don't know if I even know how to speak my mind anymore. I don't like choices I've made or some things I've done. I'm not proud of myself. I don't think I've done many things worthy of it. This does not mean I have poor feelings about everything I've done, just for the record. I know when it comes to my kids I'm on the right track. But the choice to just do what I'm told becomes stronger and stronger with every year that passes. I have to call the darker parts of myself what they are, and the only way to do that is to put it all out there for the world to see. A wound heals best when exposed to the air. This cannot continue or I'll not survive intact. I have bent too far and completely lost myself along the way. This is not enough. I need so so so much more.