How hard is it to know who you are?

How long does it take to understand who you are?

It has taken me years and I am still on this journey of discovery.

In fact the name of my blog is a reflection of who I am. I have had a tendency in the past to create e-mail accounts or livejournal accounts that had whimsical, ephemeral titles. Today, as I was creating this blog I thought "who am I truely?" and it came to me that I am just me.

Of course who could blame me for not knowing who I really was, I have been afflicted with depression for most of my life, that I think, was caused because I had an undiagnosed allergy to wheat and other foods that I have finally figured out. If I don't eat these foods my mind is lucid and focused. If I eat them I have a reaction.

What is funny about this is that I used to have a knee jerk reaction to people with "food allergies." I thought stupid things like "what a convenient excuse not to eat (_) vegetable or fruit." I thought that they were making it up, how ironic of me. Now I have to deal with that attitude as people (who don't know any better) give me a feeling that they don't believe me.
Well that's just fine for them and it serves me right for thinking like that in the past. In fact I saw the opinion stated on another forum once that "People with allergies where kept in a sterile environment as kids and didn't get to play in the dirt or have pets." I too held that rediculous opinion, until I finally realized that a lot of conventional wisdom is wrong.

I have grown up in a somewhat narrow existence. Confusion reigned as a child but now I feel as though I better know myself. I am married and have four children. Although I love them, I feel sometimes as if I just woke up and found that my life had been determined without me. I am still trying to figure out how to play the roles that I must play. It is a process of becoming.

Anyway, I started this blog as a forum of discovery. Whether anyone else reads it or not doesn't matter. I think it will force me to be more honest and reflective to be writing to an unseen "audience."

Until later,

~Strawberry Girl