The Only Person I Want to Be

Soooo...

I realize that the majority of my blogs have been like these super serious like life reflecting things for the past few weeks, but suck it up, that's how it's going to be. (haha)

Anyway

As cliché as this totally is, I just want to say that I've spent a large majority of the past four or five years trying to create this persona about myself, trying to control who I am and who I want to be. Which is a fancy way I guess of saying I've spent a lot of my conscious and developmental life trying to become something I was never going to be.
Like I've said before, I really sincerely like to plan things, and in the past, I've made attempts at planning out my entire life as a whole. I think that included who I was. I painted these personas of myself which adhered according to whatever I felt would benefit the most at the time. For a while, I was Aubree the rock-star, and then I met my first boyfriend and I was Aubree the active sporty person who enjoyed healthy eating and was trying (try being the key word here) as hard as I could to be thin and dripping with energy. I've also been Aubree the artist, Aubree the super ultra Christian, Aubree the questioning the institutionalized church because that's what was cool to do at the time Christian. I've also been Aubree the mis-understand genius who somehow knew something that nobody else did. Aubree the scholar, the angsty teen poet, and the actress. You name it, I've tried to paint myself as it pretty much. Unfortunately, no matter how many coats of paint you put on the concret wall, it's never going to turn it into dry wall, or a log cabin. Changing the outside was something I was good at, but this definitely didn't do anything but make the inside even more lost and confused. I guess somewhere along the line of being the person mixture of all people, or a certain person who I had deemed ideal, I lost the really kind of awesome person that I was. And as a disclaimer, I'm totally not meaning for this to sound like one of those self discovery stupid cheesy blogs but I think it definitely is heading that way. So, I guess if you like that keep going, and if not, I don't blame you for stopping here. Anyway, all this junk, which you can find out about if you read a little farther back in my blog happened in my life, which pretty stripped all of the paint which I had taken such care to maticulously craft and design off the wall. I was like this totally empty, hurting and broken person who on top of all of that was realizing she had no idea who she was.
And then something marvelous and miraculous happened. God showed up.
Ok - so maybe he didn't show up, maybe He had always been there, I was just stupid and blind and wasn't really paying attention. Maybe the colors which I painted were really like neon disgusting and the fumes from the paint were causing me to have like strange hallucinations which caused me not to see God the entire time. See, God did this amazing thing and took me by the hand and started to show me that all those silly images I had painted on the walls of my life were pointless...I didn't need to worry about being a certain thing or a certain person. God showed me something beautiful, and that beautiful thing is that I am HIS.
And that's where all of this figuring out started. God took me by the hand, and instead of painting on my walls, God stripped off the wall-paper and the paint which I had plastered onto myself and washed my walls clean. Then, he pointed out the beauty of the wood-work instead. He showed me how beautiful the natural coloring was, and that the grain was simply perfect, exactly as it was intended to be created. He showed me the beauty of my walls in only the way the architect of those walls could. Soon, slowely and painfully I began to discover who I was. Who God created me to be, rather, and then after that, after it became extremely clear that God was in control, I began to fall in love with that person - the person who God MADE, who God CREATED, and who God loves.

So the other day, I went to the gym, and I ran a little on the track and biked on exercise bike. Then afterwards, while I was stretching, I turned and saw this girl on one of the machines. She looked like she was probably a little younger than me, but she was thin. She was really thin, and she was beautiful and tall. She looked like a model, and walking out to my car the only thing that I could think was that I was never ever going to look like that girl. No matter how many calories I didn't consume, no matter how many miles I ran or crunches I did, or anything, I was never going to be able to look like her. I spent the rest of the night thinking about how I wish my thighs weren't as large, and my calves more defined. I wished that my stomach were flatter and my hips smaller. I wanted to be taller. I wanted to be a completely different person who I was never going to be.

And then today, I went to work, and all of the kids were playing outside. I decided to quickly run down to this restaurant right next door to grab some lunch and then run back. Walking back, I was in clear vision of the playground on which the kids in my class were playing. One of the kids spotted me, then screamed at the top of her lungs "HI MS. AUBREE!!!!" I went to wave, but before I could even get my arm up high enough for them to see me do it, I began to hear the chorus resound. "HEY!!! MS. AUBREE!!!", "LOOK! MS. AUBREE IS BACK!" "MS. AUBREE! MS. AUBREE! HI!!!".
And I realized in that moment exactly what I had failed to realize through all of highschool, and the other night at the gym. I realized that the only person in the world that I wanted to be was "Ms. Aubree". The only person I want to be is me. It's not my friends from high school. It's not someone who may or may not be more desirable to the person I may be crushing on at that current time. It isn't that girl I saw at the gym, or any girl I ever see in the halls at school, or on TV or anywhere else.
It's me. The only person I want to be is me. And yes. Sometimes I'm kind of obnoxious and I laugh at silly things, including myself, but I happen to think that's a good thing since I'd rather laugh than cry, and a life spent in laughter is better than a life spent not. It's true that I'm not a genius. I get good grades in school, but I normally work my butt off for them. Yeah, my thighs touch in the middle when I stand up, and sometimes when I eat a lot or am wearing particularly tight pants my stomach sticks out. I also have a teeny bit of cellulite (GASP!) and get a zit now and then, but that's who I am, and that's ok, and if my goal in life is to find someone who loves me for only the ways that I'm perfect, then I think I should re-assess those goals since if I succeed, I will find that I'm extremely miserable one day.

AND SO

I've concluded that life is too short to count every morsel of food that enters your mouth, to abide only by lists, and follow only schedules. Life is too short to walk around with your nose stuck in a rule book, or devising your next strategic move. God invented these amazing things called smiles and laughter. He created eyes to see and ears to hear, and so I propose that we use them. I propose that we smile more and laugh louder. I propose that laughs never be stifled, in fact, and always be allowed. Mainly, I propose that we become more concerned with how we live than how we die, because how we die is not going to be what we're remembered for, it's how we live that will get people talking.
In conclusion, I'd suggest that you let God show you exactly how beautiful your woodwork is, without the paint, without the wallpaper or stain, just exactly as is. I think you will be delightfully surprised.