Every once in a while, this feeling overwhelms me that I can't recognize my life or reconcile who I am with who I once was (or who I thought I would become).
Perhaps it's become worse lately because of the other recent major changes in my life but in truth it was happening even before that.
I'm not sure why I have this need to be able to connect the girl I was to the woman I am, but from time to time it will bewilder me that I don't keep Shabbos, that I'm not living in a frum community with several children who all go to yeshiva, that I'm not (to put it simply) who so many of my childhood friends are.
I like my life. I'm not dissatisfied with the decisions I've made but even years later, they still sometimes scare me. It makes me wonder if I'll ever be able to feel like my identity is completely stable.
But then maybe, that's the thing. Maybe this constant questioning of my own identity and my choices is just part of who I am. Maybe if I'd chosen to live a Modern Orthodox lifestyle, to have children, to belong to an MO community, I'd be wondering about the other, unknown path -- the "rebellious" path, so to speak -- and constantly feeling like I'd missed out on something, some part of who I am innately. And this me, this agnostic/atheist, secular me looking at that other life knows that I would have.
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