Well, I think I am making progress. I also had written last night on my Independance thread.
I find this process difficult but very worthwhile. I am finally figuring out what I want and who I want to be. and also what I don't want!
The dog and cat metaphore posted at the beginning of this thread is a metaphore of how I feel right now. All my life I have been praised for my intellectual capacities. I am told I am smart, sometimes brilliant. I succeed well at school and have made the dean's list. Despite my depression I have a good reputation as a scholar with my school teachers and my surroundings. I have worked hard and graduated university. I havew been admitted to the doctorate's program and should be starting up again in september. All my life I have been praised for my intellectual prowess. Despite other things I may have done, its that thing that seems to "set me apart and make me special". So I get a lot of my sense of self-worth from intellectual prowess! As such, I have always been considered an Intellectual. I have always thought myself and intellectual because of it. As it is what gets me praise it quickly became something I put effort in and something I worked really hard at. I invested a lot of time and effort in my "intellectual carreer". I have built my life around it and invested i it and set my future goals around it!
But when I think of what I really am and what I really want, school and intellectual things don't really figure into it!
Yes I am intellectual to a certain extent. I love learning and I have curious able mind! That will not ever change! But when asked what I really am and what I really like I would say: I am quirky and passionate. I am a dork and a geek and a nerd. I love fantasy and dreams. I love music and pretty pictures and new languages because I find them musical! I want to be a bard, a modern day minstrel! I want to sing and learn the piano and the guitar! I want to be free and breathe and live! I want to dance! I want to learn how to draw and I want to draw fantasy art! I want to write a fantasy book!I want to love and live ang laugh! I want to be free and bohemian and creative and happy! I want to throw my passions in all sort of creative forms of expression! I want to be me no holds bar!
As such, it feels like my whole life I thought I was one thing and now I hav e discovered I am another! Like a cat discovering it is a cat and not a dog after all!
I am rethinking going back to school. I am not sure that is what I want for myself. Of course I have lots of time to figure it out until spetember and I am making no snap decision or taking no rash actions! But I am not sure anymore that the life of a scholar is something I want. I find my studies interested but I am not sure I want the stress and anguish the intellectual performance requires! It seems to me that when I give myself free reign to dream myself up, studying does not figure into it! But I have invested a lot in being an "intellectual". It makes it hard to throw all that away and start over in something else.
But I think, now that my husband has given me so much support and given me the right to not work and be happy and just try and figure it all out, it gives me freedon to think and dream. I am slowly figuring who I am and what I want out. I find it to be difficult but worthwhile!
I have a lot to think about!
