Journey Of Wellness

On this journey of wellness, I have been given many things. Without going into detail and listing everything off in a monotonous tone, let me focus in on one of the most important things that I have come across and continue to strive towards. A sense of self. To this day, I have never felt more sure of who I am than I do right now. We go through life in a series of stages. With each stage we arrive at, we think "Oh! Maybe this is it. Maybe this is who I am." We become sure of it. How could it not be? And who's to say that its not? It may be who we really are for that moment in time. Don't discount it. We are given these moments of realization for a reason, and these moments add up. Its when they start to add up in great numbers that we start to see where we are actually headed. No one person looks at one single thing and thinks "that defines me wholeheartedly." How boring would that be? Luckily it doesn't work that way. Not to quote the greatest American film of all time, Shrek, but we human beings are made up of layers. Deciphering what each layer means is the business of life. Each layer is as beautiful as the next. One may be completely different from another, but they are equally as important. Even the negative layers help define us. But they do not not solely define us. For example, yes, I have Bipolar Disorder. But does that define me? Hell no! It may be a part of me, but its only one small thing in the mix of many others. The beauty of it is, we get to choose which layers we accentuate. Every now and then a layer I do not want may creep in, but I know how to put it on the back burner and not let it ruin my day. I often ask myself, what defines Laney? Sometimes I do not know the answer to this. It is after all a very broad question to have to ask in such a simple way. But even if I don't know how to answer the question, I do subconsciously know the answer. I always have it within me. In the past when I have been in the hospital or just going through a hard time, I may have felt like I completely had lost my way, but in reality I was still there. I still knew who I was. I may not have known where I was going but I feel that knowing who you are in the moment is better than knowing where you are going next. It is not what we have gone through that defines us, but how we have reacted to the given situation. Did I handle it with grace, determination, and drive? Did I give it the justice that it needed at the time? Did I sit in the hospital and numerous PHP programs and give it my all every second of every day? If yes to any of these, well then damn! Kudos to Laney! I am looking forward to the future, and to building my layers. Until then, I proudly live with the ones that I have already created for myself.