I have very eclectic tastes in just about everything. Music is one of those things. My playlist looks like someone with Multiple Personality Disorder set it up. My kids are always pleasantly surprised to hear a Drake or Kanye song pop up when they are riding in the car with me. They aren’t as pleased with the yoga chants and Italian accordion dinner music. I like some country music, too. I think country music is especially good at telling a personal story. Yesterday, the song Miss Me More by Kelsea Ballerini popped up when I was driving. In the song, the singer laments that she had just broken up with a lover. She thought that she would really miss him, but what she realizes is that during the relationship she had given up so much of herself, changing to do what she thought would please him, that she actually “missed herself” more, hence the title. The chorus lyrics are particularly telling:
I thought I’d miss you (when it ended)
I thought it hurt me (but it didn’t)
I thought I’d miss you
I thought I’d miss you
But I miss me more
I miss my own beat, to my own snare drum
I miss me more
Miss my own sheets in the bed I made up
I forgot I had dreams, I forgot I had wings
Forgot who I was before I ever kissed you
Yeah, I thought I’d miss you
But I miss me more (I miss me more)
Now, my dear husband is my biggest blog supporter and a daily reader, so I want to make it clear that I am very happy in my relationship with him. He’s never asked me to change a thing about myself. This is one of the many reasons why I love him so much. The truth is, if we are honest with ourselves, most of the time, people don’t ask us to change ourselves. But sometimes I think, us women especially, start making subtle changes without even realizing it ourselves.
Society is pretty geared towards rewarding women to be pleasers, nurturers and carers. Now I believe some of this is biological and some of this is just what happens when we start creating our lives and our families. Both men and women make all sorts of personal sacrifices for our family and career responsibilities. And we are happy to do these sacrifices, because of the greater good for our families and for society as a whole. However, sometimes we get in the habit of making unnecessary sacrifices. We start whittling our lives down to the “necessities” and the “shoulds” and then we reach a burn-out stage and look for someone to blame. It is painful to understand that the “someone to blame” is often ourselves.
Years ago, a friend was telling me that her mother was shaming her for everything my friend expected her husband to do around the house and with the kids. My friend got frustrated and finally spouted out, “I don’t want to end up being an angry, resentful, victim like so many older women seem to be!!!” That hit home for me. It would be unfair for me to feel resentment towards my family, for things I willingly gave and did for them. Heck, our kids didn’t even ask to be born! I am willing to bet that most men (not talking about the abusive ones), really ultimately would rather come home to the happy woman he fell in love with, than the one who is seething in resentment but is keeping up “perfect appearances.” Joan Rivers had a funny line about this. This is what she said: “Don’t cook. Don’t clean. No man will ever make love to a woman because she waxed the linoleum. “My God, the floor’s immaculate! Lie down, you hot bitch.”
I think the song hits a chord by reminding us to give love and self-care to ourselves every bit as much as we give to our children, our partners and our friends. We tell our children to “be themselves”. We encourage them to really explore their interests and dive into their talents. Kids listen to what we do, more than what we say. It’s the old adage of putting on our own oxygen masks before we can help anyone else. I remember reading that Jackie Kennedy once said something to the effect that our biggest responsibility to the world is to be happy. She said that most of the world’s miseries are caused by unhappy people. Now a lot of times, giving and doing for others feels really good, if we are doing it for the right reasons. However, if we are giving just to get something in return or giving to the point of martyrdom, then perhaps we really have to check our motives and take our own temperatures. Our responsibility to ourselves, our loved ones and frankly, to the world, is to nurture ourselves. We must be kind and loving to ourselves. We must make it a priority to take time to love and grow our own unique characteristics, instead of tucking them away and then blaming someone else for doing what we have actually done to ourselves. It’s not selfish at all to lovingly care for yourself. In fact, sometimes it’s the most selfless thing you can do.
