Let's Get Personal

ECR over at 24/7, in a post in which she does the same, asked those who read her blog answer the question, "Who are you?" Although you can look at my profile and get some information about me, I don't know if that answers the question of who I am very well. Now, I was very excited about this last night but as I sit here to type, I'm thinking it is going to be harder to answer that question than I thought. Maybe it is because I feel like I am many different people.

I am Mary the mom. I have two children who were born eight years apart. Well, seven years and 49 weeks exactly. Once you have children, they are just a part of you in way that you can't explain if it hasn't been experienced. I will never be able to seperate that from who I am as a person. However, I experience a lot of self doubt as a parent due to my own emotional baggage. Sometimes I picture that baggage as being like the chains that Jacob Marley warns Ebenezer Scrooge he is forging daily by his eponymous behaviour. The difference being that with each passing year I am dismantling that chain. It is defintely shorter than it was when I first got married. Which leads me to the next Mary...

I am Mary the wife. Paul and I have been married almost nineteen years. I feel like I am a completely different person than that 23-year old girl who stood with Paul in front of a justice of the peace in Grand Prairie, Texas all those years ago. Yet somehow I am more myself. Being Mary the wife has allowed me to have a safe place in which to deal with a lot of the emotional baggage I mentioned in the previous paragraph. That's because I married one the most decent guys around who happened to be my best friend. I know about friendship because...

I am also Mary the friend. I don't know if it makes sense that I see my being a friend as very central to who I am as a person. I think because I struggled with the normal childhood friendships--the ones which are initially limited to the kids in your neighborhood or in your classroom. Those neighborhood kids can be something of a crap shoot. You never know if your going to get good ones or bad ones. And school, hmmm... I just didn't fit in well at school until junior high. I think those early experiences made me a little clingy though to the new friends I made. As I grew older, I worked at that and became more able to seperate myself from my friends in a healthy way. I think what helped me most be able to learn how to be a better friend is the fact that...

I am Mary the Christian. I think I said it best in a post I wrote in June so I am just going to quote myself here:

...I don't make a big deal of it, but my faith in God is the absolute foundation of my life. My worldview is completely informed by my belief in God. So, when I complain about my life, despair at the state of the universe and go on and on about everything, it is with an underlying certainty that God is the creator of life, the universe and everything. I believe he knows what he is doing, that I cannot possibly grasp all that he is doing and that there will come a time when all will be explained.

That last bit--about believing he knows what he is doing, etc. I am really glad about that part because...

I am Mary with issues. Remember that emotional baggage I talked about? Well, I'm not talking your basic three-piece set from Target. This is the deluxe, ten-piece Swiss Army set from Victorinox for the low, low price of $4,999. It hasn't always been easly lugging this set around the airport of life but God has been good to me and I've had lots of help along the way. Although I still trip over it once in a while, I've got a pretty good system of transporting it from place to place now.



Mary, the Christian. Mary, the wife. Mary, the mother, Mary with issues. These are all integral pieces of the puzzle that put all together equal just Mary. Mary, the almost 42-year old woman who is still 20-years old in her mind's eye. In my mind's eye. I have always loved reading. I have a B.A. in Literary Studies that I have never put to professional use. I am planning on going back to get a Master's, probably in the fall. My days consist of family stuff, church stuff and me stuff which means reading, blogging and pretending that I exercise. I used to love drawing. I want to take a photography class and a mosaic class. I love television and movies and am definitely a product of the age in that way.

You'll notice I didn't claim to be a writer. I don't know if I am. Blogging is another form of talking for me and yes, I am quite the talker--just ask that introverted husband of mine. I blog for many different reasons and I have many different blogs. I first started blogging to keep my friends and family up to date on the kids, the husband and myself, hence So-So Cal Cinema (formerly known as Tales From the Edge of Sanity.) Eventually, I decided to start another blog, Memoria, because I was missing some people I'd lost in my life and had such a strong urge to write about them. Getting the writing juices flowing and visiting other blogs led to the desire to write about different things--things I knew my family would not be interested in and didn't fit in with the theme of my "remembering" blog. So, on Monday, April 3, 2006, this blog, Life, the Universe and Everything was born when I wrote a post titled "42." Wrapping up the blog parade, I have a single post blog which is just there to explain the meme I started, Sleeping with Bread Monday and then there is the family-only blog. I love this one because my mom, my sister and my uncle all put pictures on it and little bits and pieces of what they are doing. I am a five-blog woman.

So, there you are. You've just been introduced to Mary, the momish, wife-ish, Christian, full of issues, five-blog woman. ECR said that she hoped those reading would have no "no excuse to dismiss this burning question" of "who are you." I'm not sure how burning the question was and I know that this could never be a complete answer to that question. But it's a start.

Until tomorrow,

Mary

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