Here I Am Again

Journals and me go back a long way. I can remember being in first grade and trying to keep a diary. It was hard at the time and I realize now it's because not many first graders have all that much to journal about in depth. I certainly didn't. Journaling for me has always been about taking the pieces of my soul that I can't figure out and attaching words to them. Not to say that I was particularly uncomplicated six year old because I wasn't. But the scope of my complications and the words I knew to describe them were much smaller.

These days every time I sit down to write I'm struck with a million conflicting thoughts and issues and things to say about them. It becomes easier to just talk because anyone who knows me knows that talking is not an issue for me. Shutting up and getting to a point maybe but not talking. Except talking means having to listen and not so much to what the other person is saying but to myself. That's when everything becomes real. That's when I have to stop pretending that I honestly feel like my life is alright.

So I've become something of a mute these days with the words I do use usually meaning nothing. This is my attempt to get the better of that urge. To stop ignoring and hiding and pretending like what I watched on TV is the most important thing I have to talk about. It's so I'll stop waking up every morning and asking myself "How?" and "Why?" and "Seriously universe?" and start coming up with answers to those questions.

Something about blogging has always felt a bit self indulgent to me but I think I've reached that point where I need to indulge myself. I need to have long conversations with myself where I figure what the last ten years of my life have really been about and what I honestly want to happen now. I can't promise that I'll always make sense and I can only fervently promise that I hope to be entertaining. I tend to cry and laugh in equal measures and sometimes at the same time.

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

- Elizabeth Gilbert