TAMF's Christmas Miracle?

[AntoniaB]

I totally agree, Becca. I didn't think I had an identity before as an individual. I lived with my parents first year of college. The DAY I WENT TO LIVE IN THE DORM, 2nd year, I saw my future H. Within 2 months, we were seeing one another. Within a week , we were proclaiming undying love, and within a month, we talked marriage. We barely ever fought, were inseperable for the next 3 years, and we excluded our friends. We didn't "need" them. We graduated together. Then he moved for his job.

This marked the ONLY time in my life I was apart from him for a year and a half. However, I drove to see him nearly every weekend. I spent vacations with him instead of my family (who by the way I lived with again). Not at any point in time was I ever forced to be an individual/apart. It was protection from my parents or him. Then we got married, and the rest is in my signature.

When my psychiatrist told me to find myself/develop myself as an individual apart from him, she said "who were you before you were a couple?" It was really hard to find that--but there was one small slice I could focus on: the time that I was in grad school and working part time (while living with my parents). There was no email, no cell phones, and neither of us could afford long distance calls. So from M to Thursday each week, I was without him and a student/writer/researcher. Guess what? When all this crap went down this summer, I became friends with a former student who was going to grad school. Due to her issues with her family and her fears about striking out to move 8 hours away alone to go to school, she and I bonded. She came at just the right time to help me remember that one part of me that was MINE all alone, not influenced by him or my parents.

And that small part is what I focused on and that, dear friends, is who I found out I am. I LOVE books. I love to read. I love to write analysis of books. I'm a perpetual student in so many ways, and this is why it turns out I am in the right career, as a professor (which I always doubted whether I was good enough to do), and suddenly, everything that isn't "him" is "right" for me.

So I think that even if you were a really sheltered individual like me, you can still figure out WHO you are if you look hard enough. There is something there in your core that you can develop that has nothing to do with your parents or your spouse that is yours and yours alone.