get to know myself better

I know my name, age, that i don’t have a favorite color, and whatnot. But i can’t help but feeling like i’m a stranger. A few of my friends and i have a joke about how they know me better than i know myself, and i’ve been thinking about that lately.
I’m a very gaurded person. I don’t open up to many people, and i don’t know why. What gets to me is that if they know me, and i don’t, there’s a break in the wall i keep up. I don’t want people seeing me if i haven’t chosen to show that.
(as i’ve said before) I need improvements, and i’m working on it. I don’t want someone to see something that is in the process of changing, having a bad impression that they won’t let go of, and not being accepted because of it.
confusing, i know…help?

i dont know myself at all what i want or how to get there am painfully indecisive.

How can I get better?
Any suggestions?

So I realized today that I don’t know very much about myself. I’ve always been a giving person. I live to help others. I put everyone else in front of myself. I don’t know why I do this. Perhaps it’s just my nature to imagine how it must feel to be someone else. Or to want to fix things for others. I’m just a victim of a bleeding heart. But when you do this, sometimes you forget who you are in the process. Instead you become someone’s prop, someone’s aide, a shadow in someone else’s life.

So I’m going to make it a mission to get to know myself. To learn the things that bring me joy and the things that make me cry. I went for a walk out in nature today and I felt alive. How noticing the water’s twinkling reflection on the tree trunks bending over the oozing river made me think. Or how walking through the straw fields made me wander. Or how staying home alone on a Saturday night feels like Christmas Eve—warm and safe.

Tomorrow will be day one of this process. I will make a list of ways to get to know myself—get involved in more activities, try new things, spend more time alone, spend more time in a nature, etc.

I am 23 years old. I have a wonderful family, a satisfying job and am in pretty good health.

Inspite of all this, at times I feel like I don’t know myself better. I ask myself – What do I do for fun? and i have no answer.

I wish i could find a systematic , fun way to get to know myself better.

Im 23… I know I have a long way to go. But I would be able to enjoy alot more if I could just skip a few years and know myself now like I would at 35. I bet I look back at myself and think how stupid I was for stressing so many things I cannot control.

Something I find very interesting about this whole discovery is listening to different parts of myself and recognizing which voices come from where. Not in a schizophrenic sense, but some needs (for want of a better word) are far more physical, others emotional, others mental or spiritual etc.
I think I find it far too easy to listen to and give in to the physical demands, but they do not fulfill me as much as others. I fear that I am lazy and will not force myself, will not push myself as far as I should.
But only I can really do that! Others can inspire and partly motivate, but the will has to come from within.

The thing I never wanted to happen is happening. Somehow I knew it would – is that how I am able to keep breathing?
I am facing the fact that the person I love and have loved since I was young in all the ways you can love someone, has to leave me and his life to go and find himself. I am able to let him go (even though I have no choice in the matter I am amazed a part of me can smile for him); but I am having to live my worst fear – the thought of not being with him in any sense of the word.
Maybe he will come back; there is a part of me that is calm and believes in our love and is excited that now I can do all the things I wanted to but held myself back from doing for fear of losing him.
I am scared, calm, wanting to rip my heart out, hold myself close, run crazily wild around the streets, sobbing, wailing, smiling, slumped, broken, shining, lost, looking forward to finding more of me…