My Life, the Rollercoaster

This is my life right now.  A rollercoaster. 

Mind you, it is actually not even as bad as it used to be. 

Believe me, I have had some pretty wild rides before.  I thank God I am not there anymore. 

Right now I am on a different kind of rollercoaster.

It is called Growing Up.

Growing up?  As old as I am?

Well, you see, all the years of my life I took the safe road. Meaning, I did all the things that I was supposed to do.  Or, at least, the kind of things that I hoped would not make waves for me.  

Come to think of it, now that I write that, I see that even that statement is not quite right.

I partly tried to live a safe life, so as not to make waves.  

Then, again, I did have some crazy things happen in my life.  I guess what I mean by growing up is that this is the first time in my life that I am living it according to the way I want to live it, giving myself permission to be the real me.

Which is really scary.

For whatever reasons there are in life that all the self help books talk about, I have spent my life denying who it was I really wanted to be.  Whatever I knew would truly make me happy, I made sure not to allow it in my life.  Whatever I knew would make me miserable, I made sure to go after that.

Why?

I still don't know.  Millions of reasons and no reason at all.

My point is, that, even though I have been around quite a while, I have never lived my life.  

I made sure to be all the people I was "supposed" to be, but I was never the real me.

Right now, as I have left my old life behind and have begun this journey to live the real me, meaning, to do the things in my life that really matter to me, that have always mattered to me, I am telling you, it is the hardest thing to do.  Especially when you have never allowed yourself to do that.

What I am saying is that I was going to again begin this blog saying, "oh, my gosh, I blew it again!  It's been so long since I've been here!"  But I felt I would be saying the same thing with the same promises not to ever do that again, and yet afraid I was going to do it again.  

The thing is, after all the years of my life not allowing me to be me,  it is damn hard finally allowing me to be me.  My life goes up and down, forwards and backwards, inching my way up, then crashing down at breakneck speed.  

My old ways don't want me to be happy.  They tell me it is not right to be the real me.  It is selfish to be the real me.  And who are you to do that anyway?  Who gave you permission to be happy?  Who gave you permission to be "Carol B."?

Well, damn it, I gave myself permission to be Carol B.  I knew when I was four years old that I was supposed to be an artist, and damn it, I am going to be an artist.  It has taken me weeks to finally learn how to put up my Etsy shop, because of the dumb tech problems I was having in knowing how to resize and put up pictures, but I finally learned, and instead of giving up like the old me would have done, my Etsy shop will soon be up.  There is probably no one else around that has taken so long to put up an Etsy Shop, but there you go.  And I have always loved to write and instead of telling myself "who are you to write this blog?" I am going to write it.  I am hoping along the way that maybe whatever I write will touch a cord in someone else's life and help them in whatever they are going through, the way the writing of others has helped me.  But even if it doesn't, I am going to write this because I really want to and it means something to me, and that should be reason enough.

Yes, I am back again.  And I will give myself permission to put up my Etsy shop and to tell you when it is up.  I will give myself permission to work on my art today because it is how I breathe, how I was always meant to breathe.  And I will give myself permission to come back here tomorrow and write because I love to write and I love to communicate and I love reaching out to others and I hope I am reaching out to you.

I give myself permission to be

Carol B.