Epiffany (o:
11/27/2002 07:28 p.m.
I wrote this a while ago after I'd been talking to Koye... I'm just going to put it up here. Sim, this is the thing I wanted you to read. I think it explains some things I should have explained before. Ah well, here it is.

I had an epiphany. Its a nice thing when that happens. We were just talking (Koye and I) and he was calling me wimpy and rightly so. I was complaining that Tommy didnt love me. It was dumb and silly but he just burst out and said Youre such a wimp! What happened to you? I remember in high school the hyper-feminism and you saying if you cant give yourself a feeling or be happy in yourself, somethings wrong. What happened to that? And wed both been talking to me about that. Id wonder that whenever I talked to Tommy on the phone. Whats wrong with me that I cant just be happy? Why do I base what Im feeling on him? There was a time when I despised girls who did that. (Silly me, I never thought there were boys who did that with girls... turns out boys can be just as wimpy as girls.) So I decided that now was the time to work this out because it had gone on long enough. So I settled myself into my bed and began to talk and figured that Id stop whenever I was done. I talked for a long time. I dont even remember what all I said, but there was so much going on, I doubt it matters. Koye and I determined that I had given something to John and I needed to get it back, but I didnt know what it was or how to get it back. I actually put in words for the first time today what I gave to him. (When I had the epiphany, there werent any words for it; I just needed to stop what I was doing...)

I became Mrs. Monroe, which is fine for her, since shes married, but I wasnt married to John. (The whole story here is that she said one day that her entire self-confidence was based on what David thought about her. It stuck with me and Ive evaluated that idea in my brain about a thousand times, each time finding some new thing I hadnt had before.) I gave my self-confidence to him. I gave him all my self-respect. Anything about me that I liked, I gave to him and made sure he liked it too and then I just left it all with him. After we broke up, I never thought to get it back. Sure, you think about getting back your CDs and other things of yours they borrowed, but you dont think about your self-confidence. If you put how you view yourself into the hands of someone else, when you lose that person, you lose yourself. I got so used to John reaffirming me all day everyday that, when I lost that, I lost any belief in me. When you have someone telling you five times a day that youre okay, if they stop, you stop being okay. So you have to get to a point where youre comfortable just being you and having the friends you have and the God you have and that being enough. Its about wanting what you have; appreciating that you do have amazing friends and God is working in your life and showing you things. I think I would have appreciated more the direction that God has given me recently towards ministry if I wouldnt have been so caught up in being good enough.

When I told Tommy about this epiphany he became me for a second and said Wait, wait, being in a relationship is wonderful. The ultimate happiness is finding a person to share your life with. Yeah, I agree. Love is amazing. Once youve been in a relationship that was really good, you miss it when its gone. Believe me, I know this. You lose a lot of the excess happiness you were getting. Being in a relationship with someone is definitely a good thing. It definitely brings happiness. But what if you never find that person? What if you go through your life and never marry? Does that mean you dont ever get to be happy? It shouldnt be that way. You should be content with what you have, and thankful for it, and rejoicing over it. There is a fine line between basing your happiness on another person and simply enjoying that happiness when you can get it. Putting your entire self-esteem on someone else is just a bad idea. People make mistakes and theyre going to let you down. That shouldnt affect how you see yourself. It just means that people arent perfect. If you put the way you see yourself in something less erratic (contentment with being you, the joy in a God that loves you and will always) then you arent going to need someone telling you that youre okay every five minutes. Isnt easier to just be okay with you?

I gave John more things. Bigger things, maybe. I gave him the way I thought of boys. I gave up all I knew to be true about boys. He was one exception to the rule and I thought everyone was like him. Growing up it was very normal for me to love someone and to never ever tell them. If I did end up telling, I never expected anything in return. It was my experience that if you tell a boy that you like him, hell almost never like you back. So I got used to that. I figured thats how it would be with John. But I told him that I liked him and he said Okay, cool. I like you too and we dated. So I reevaluated my entire view of boys. I thought maybe Id just been seeing them wrong the whole time. Well, no, I hadnt. Id been seeing clearly. John clouded my vision of boys. And I expected every boy to respond to me the way John had, even though that response was only a 30% kind of response. Boys mostly had nothing to do with me romantically in high school. Somehow I threw that out the window and expected boys to all be what theyd only been 30% of the time. Those kinds of expectations are ridiculous and thats just when I put them on people like Simeon who Id known for years. (Yeah, this whole epiphany even helped me see where I was going wrong with Simeon. Even though we have always only been friends, I was expecting more than that from him because Id given up the part of me that was able to see boys as just friends. Id look at boys in my classes and if I thought they wouldnt date me - that was it for them. Id cross them off the list and not even consider them for friendship. Well, that is just dumb.) But to put those kinds of expectations on someone Ive never even met like I did to Tommy... I dont know how he handled that. I cant look at boys in that way anymore. I cant expect all boys to be John and I dont want all boys to be John. Its just as bad to group all boys into the good category as it is to shove them all into the bad one. Looking at any group without seeing individuals is just dumb. It makes you do things like I was doing.

Its like the horoscope thing Tommy and I were talking about last night. He found out that hes actually a Capricorn, not an Aquarius like he thought. Yeah, so who cares, you ask? Well, apparently, Capricorns and Geminis arent compatible. (This, by the way, is ridiculous since Karla who Ive been friends with since kindergarten, and my grandma who is my favorite relative are both Capricorns.) Whos to say who is or isnt compatible? People are so individual that it must be impossible to make those kinds of predictions. So yeah, its all a bunch of crap, right Tommy? So the main thing with this epiphany is that I was just being overbearing and I had some impossible standards for the people I love. When I got done talking about it with Koye my response to it was I need to call like a million people and apologize. I definitely feel bad for causing so much trouble.

Can you believe it? I even used Jon Huff in this epiphany. I was thinking that I really needed to go to that Tori concert with him. He was necessary in that situation. If Simeon had gone with me, I might never have had this epiphany. Everything that happened with Jon was so platonic and I just really havent had that in a while. It was me and a boy and just friendship. I dont think I would have felt the same way if Id gone with Simeon. And its not to say I dont want to spend time with him, obviously. But it took being away from him for a little tiny while to realize something that will make our relationship so much better.

So I think I got my things back from John. There may still be some things I havent noticed Im missing yet. Thatll come eventually, Im sure. But these things... my self-confidence, the way I see me, the way I see boys... I got all those back. Um, and now the hugest thank-you in the world is owed to Koye Berry cause I wouldnt have gotten this far without him. Thanks, and dont you dare name your daughter Epiffany.

I am currently Happy
I am listening to "Sorta Fairytale" by dearest Tori Amos