I've recently started feeling like I'm allowed to be happy again.
I was happy again. For the first time in two years, I let myself be happy.

But I think I need to develop some kind of device that zaps the shit out of me when I can't figure out how to shut my mouth.

God, writers must be the most miserable human beings in existence.

xo

That's Not All.

"What are we doing here?"
"What am I doing here?"

I've recently found myself asking those two questions over and over. What is my purpose for this world? I entered Year 22 positive that it would be my best year yet. So far, I've been lucky. I've shed my old skin and grew something thicker, tougher - new. In a few days I'm going to be closing out this chapter and starting a whole different one. I'm scared but more than that I'm excited. For over a year I let myself do exactly what my favorite quote said not to do: I got lost int he past.

I spent many days thinking that I've moved on and I was living my life, but really I was just smothering icing over a burnt cake. I was still badly burnt on the inside, regardless of what my outside was saying.

I want to move past this, I want to find the future.
I don't know what's in store for me, or what my purpose is. I don't know what anyones purpose is, but I want to find out.

I'm going to close this chapter, for the time being anyway. I know that there will be times where I will want to look back and read through the old pages. That's just my nature, I don't ever want to forget where I've been or what I went through.

I just want to start writing something knew.

...and that's all she wrote.

Apathy.

Greetings,

I've been feeling increasingly uninspired lately. I don't know what 2011 did to me, but I feel stripped of all creative ability. I don't even feel as thought I've been dressing myself lately. I walk down the street and see little (less attractive) clones of myself. Everything is the same, everything is boring the life right out of me. I don't know where to begin to make myself alive again. I wish someone could give me plot points and I could just connect the dots to create the picture of my life. Once it's outlined I could fill in the colors. I just don't have it in me to do it all alone.

Where are you plot points? Where are you hiding.
Come home to me soon.

Intolerance.

I just became super irritated.

I was browsing around on my computer and noticed that someone left up a website called dearblankpleaseblank.com. Naturally I started scrolling through it because it seemed pretty interesting. I started laughing and smiling at it so it caught the attention of my 8 year old niece sitting next me to me. She was suppose to be writing a story for a school project but she started sneaking and was reading the page. I didn't see it personally but she started reading something out loud. I heard her saying "Is gay marriage okay?" then didn't even hesitate for a single second before she exclaimed "EW! No it's not okay, that's nasty."

I immediately did a head desk and simply said "I don't think it's nasty." She looked at me with raised eyebrows and her "Are you insane?" look.

So I have to ask, when is it appropriate to explain to a kid the facts of life? I'm not a gay/lesbian person and neither is anyone in our family but I don't think that we should just go on ignoring intolerance. It's a difficult thing to teach someone when she's also being brought up with a religious background. How am I going to be able to teach her that there is nothing wrong or nasty about people who are in the LGBT community while not interrupting her beliefs in God.

It's so frustration having so many contradictions in life. I would be nearly ashamed to have a member of my family be intolerant of anyone for something they can't help, but how do I teach them to accept people as they are. Isn't God suppose to be forgiving? Shouldn't we be telling the children in our lives not to judge?

I just don't know anymore.

Help? Answers? Advice?

Faith

Letters.

Today I wrote a letter.

I started it off the only way possible - "I'm writing what will be my final letter to you." For three years I had been writing these letters in my times of desperation and complete loss of control. It had been a long time since I put my pen to the paper and wrote to him. Longer than I had even realized.

It started again this morning when I finally found some motivation to clean up the basement. I started shuffling through drawers and found a blank, unsealed envelope. Inside it were all of my letters. Three years worth of problems and heartache. I started reading through them for the first time and to say it was a difficult task would be an understatement. I spent two hours sitting on the floor of my basement reliving my life until I noticed that the letters stopped in August of 2009. That was the exact moment when it became clear to me that I never needed to write the them in the first place. It had just become habitual, part of my routine. When my dad passed away in September of 2009, I never thought about the letters again. Not until today.

In those two hours I learned so much about myself, about the real me. I was raw and honest. I didn't hold any of it back, not the judgments, arrogance, pain, addictions. I let it all out in those letters and on September 19, 2009 - I completely morphed into the person who was narrating them. I am that girl, as much as it killed me to finally own up to it. I am the judgmental, arrogant, forever in pain girl. The only difference now is that I can handle it. I've learned to roll with the punches and kick aside the rocks that life throws in my path. I no longer need to write letters to someone who is long gone to release my demons. I never should have had to.

So I picked up a pen and a pad of paper and I wrote "I'm writing what will be my final letter to you."

It will be, because I am okay.

Faith