John is a big fan of my blog.  I daresay it’s one of the reasons he fell in love with me.  Maybe.  So when I go through droughts of what to write or when to put pen to paper, he encourages me with topic ideas.  Actually, it’s just one topic idea so far.  He persistently requests I write about “how to find your person”.  As a wedding gift to him, I figured I would give it a shot.

Spoiler alert: This is not going to go where you think.

I love Grey’s Anatomy.  In many ways, and as I assume many will admit, the show has been a refuge away from my own life drama.  In other ways, it’s a source of life wisdom and of life inspiration.

But I think all the fans can agree on the importance of that pivotal moment when Christina admits to Meredith, with her head on her shoulder, “You’re my person”. For some of us, that moment inspired us to go on a life expedition to identify “our person”.  The unapologetic, unrelenting, unending relationship with someone who understands you to your core.  The person that makes you, as a person, feel seen.  Your “go to”.

I’m not big on the idea of soulmates.  But the above description I get.   To pursue finding someone that sees the you that you love and adore, and who appreciates the strengths and baggage that you bring to the table.  The pursuit of this “mate” seems to be a very typical life search: “the norm”, shall we say.  That’s a big goal of our lives, right?  To find someone who sees us for who we really are, and loves us infinitely and indefinitely?

I’ll be getting married very soon to someone who I refer to as “my person”.  But every time I say that, I have to admit: that is a lie.  I am not marrying “my person”.

I am not marrying “my person” because I have a very hard but all-too-necessary truth to share.  One that was shared with me one very dark, dark night several years ago.  During a time when I was knee deep in tears, and pain, and unrelenting loneliness.

You. Are. Your. Person.

You read that correctly.  You are your person.  There is no one that you will spend more time with, more time talking to, more time thinking about, fretting about, working on, and being alone with, than yourself.

This is a tough pill to swallow for some.  I get that.  As a 3w4 on the Enneagram chart, I probably get the difficulty of this as well as any.  I am The Performer (also called The Achiever).  My natural motivation is achievement (shocker).  But to do so, I often tend to perform to who ever is front of me.  I am not fake.  But rather I tend to play up different components of my personality to match the people I am with.  I assume that’s why I’m told I have great rapport with others.  But also why I have a very limited number of close friends – I don’t let most people all the way in.

So when one, such as myself, finds themselves suddenly alone, and in a path of rediscovering themselves…well, this particular “performer” personality of mine puts a few additional roadblocks in the way.  And particularly, it makes dating a precarious adventure of mishaps, to put it lightly.

So, yes, I get how difficult it is to be even marginally okay with accepting yourself as your person first.  Particularly when you’re not sure who and/or what you truly is.

Disclaimer to Grammar Nerds: if you read that last sentence the way I intended, it won’t sound so terrible.   Do it.  I believe in you.

In that search of figuring out you, we sometimes feel like we should find someone else who relates to us first.  Someone to be in a relationship with first.  Then, we’ll figure out who we are.

This is why break-up’s and divorces are so common.

We get caught up in pumpkin-spice hand-holding, and cozy cuddled matching hoodies, and the “peace” of having a +1.  And we skip right over the bigger but drastically more important relationship…with ourselves.  The one where we take time to understand who we are, in silence, in crowds, as a friend, alone, our own motivations, our own goals, our own desires, how we react under stress, and how we act when we are at peace.  We skip all of this understanding and acceptance of ourselves, so we can be understood and accepted by someone else, and vice versa.

Seems pretty backwards, huh?

Very, very soon, I will be legally betrothed to someone.  And that someone does understand me, accept me, and love me to my core.  The broken pieces, the healing pieces, the strong pieces, and the faltering pieces.

But that did not happen by chance.

Before that was ever possible, I had to know the parts of me I loved, the parts of me I would not negotiate, and the parts of me that gave me peace.  I had to understand where I was broken, strong, and healing.  When that happened, finding someone to love me to my core became much, much easier.

In my 36 short years, I have been blessed with more love than I could ever deserve, by more than one life partner.  That is a blessing I could never be grateful enough for.

But at the end of the day, when I think of all the love that has built me, the love that I hold most dear, and the love that fills me with the most joy, I have to admit that one earthly love beats it all.

I love being loved, and I love being in love.  But the greatest peace comes when I just love myself.

I am so excited to have found someone that I can call “my person”.  But when I’m honest, I have to admit…

I found her a long time ago.