The need to be complete...

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Early Friday evening, another working week completed and sat listening to the interview of Ruth Jones by John Bishop.

This week a lot has gone on and I have made some decisions and thought a great deal. 

I have been thinking to myself, in life when can you call time and say your complete? I always wanted to be the complete me, a package, the real deal. 

During my teenage years, being complete meant getting good grades, wearing the right labels and being liked.

Later it became money, relationships, and status.

I wanted to be successful, so I did what I was supposed to. I attempted to follow the rules, check the tick boxes, and I really applied myself in my golf and my work. 

I wanted to be happy,  I wanted to find a connection, I worked hard at pleasing everyone.  Looking back at that time, I believe that I did everything, but now I know in my heart I could have done more.

I still was not complete. Half of me was not complete. 

As a teenager, I was painfully shy, I spent a lot of time in my room.  I hid away. 

In my twenties, I worked out obsessively and didn't eat enough.  I denied myself happiness and made my now wife miserable.

Now at 39, I am drifting and hardened by the last 8/9 years. 

I am married and settled and not well physically and maybe slightly not well mentally.  I am living day to day. My life isn't perfect but I have learnt nobodys life is. 

I can say I am 3/4 complete. 

Complete to me means existing within a narrow scope of life.  It means having all of the light and putting up with the dark.  It means owning my flaws and struggles.

For a long time I felt that I wasn't successful, happy, or connected, and I sure wasn't confident. Now at 39, I am happy in my marriage and my wife is my soul mate.  My sister and I have a fantastic relationship, I have two nephews and a couple of friends that I can talk to about anything, my twin means the world to me.  I am successful at work, I am good at my job.

I am working on my confidence.

This week, I have been humbled and I need to fine tune things in my life. I need to stop drifting and stop floating through life. I want to do things now not later as later for me may not come or I may not be mobile enough.  So I have had conversations with my wife recently that we have never had. 

There have been a handful of times lately that I have considered letting it all go and throwing in the towel so to speak.  I've been to some dark places for the first time in my life and I am not fully out of the woods. 

The most important thing for me in my life jas always been to feel secure.  I am secure. 

This week, I have started looking at the whole of me, not just the shiniest parts. This has not been easy. We all have that side of us we'd rather not see, and for those of you who read my blog, you would know that I have pushed mine far, far away.

The parts of me, even the parts of me struggling are still me.  Being complete means that I can see my perfection and imperfection, my hurt and my healing, my fears and my courage. 

Learning to love me, my line and my life now has not been easy and I am not fully in this mind space yet.  I have nothing to hide and am beyond changing now.  I just want to be.  

I have worked out that being whole is simply a matter of being.  Whole is complete in itself, and it's always enough.

In life, I have hoped, dreamed, doubted and feared.  I have surprised myself on countless occasions, for better and for worse.  I have done mostly what I set out to do.  I have succeeded, failed, fallen, risen, hurt and healed.  I have loved, lost friends, and lived to love again.  I have stood in the shadows and danced in my light.  I have sung and cried, whispered and yelled.

In my life, I have learned to crawl, to walk, to run, to soar and to adapt to a new me. I have said the right things at the right time and also said things I didn't mean.

I have had occasions when I have been right and wrong, hard and soft, fearless and afraid.

I have felt pride, shame, joy, sorrow, serenity, distress and I know I will feel all of this over and over in my life. 

Everything I have done, everything I have seen, people I have known, heartbreaks, deaths and births, plans I have tried to make and plans I have had to throw away have all been part of my wholeness. 

I'm not perfect and never claimed to be.  I trust me and I have my wife and everything else I can pick up along the way.  I won't hide in my shadows anymore and will bask in the sunlight. 

I am me, a combination of experience, insight, strength and imperfection that makes me Odette.  I always was and always will be wholly beyond compare. 

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