I’m the only one who can live my life.

That has got to be the scariest thing I’ve thought about in a long while. Whereas it’s indisputable that I’m, at heart, a loner, there’s phantom comfort in knowing that looking around does not yield a barren landscape. I’m so used to living on the fringes of my world (my sister would say the problem is that I have a world…:P) that I don’t often spend time in it. The price paid for that tends to be total disrepair.

Change is hard…and I have to change. As great and supportive as people are/can be, and as grateful as I am for the amazing people in my life, no one can do this for me. No one can hold my hand through the process of learning to breathe…not to the point that they can make me function in ways I refuse to. No one can make me get up one day and decide to do more than take fleeting glances at what it means to live. I want no one to.

I’ve never been that person who can’t be alone, who doesn’t know the value of silence, who finds the company of self to be petrifying. In the same breath, the alternative leaves me most out of my depth. This is who I am. Just a weirdo trying to glean lessons without having to be knocked senseless first. I’m no superhero. I’m not even a real person most days, but I’d like to think I’m learning what that looks like.

This is who I am…and I embrace that fully, remaining cognizant of the reality that I am not static. I will not always be this person, but if I don’t engage in the process, I may not like the person I become.

I’m the only one who can live my life. And, I will.

Thus says the Lord God to these bones: ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’

Ezekiel 37:5, 6 (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.