one year ago

For some reason I woke up this morning thinking about all the ways that my life has changed over the past year. A year is such a short time. 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,765 hours and 525,949 minutes. Well, I suppose when I put it like that it feels like an eternity. The point is: some people don’t accomplish much in one year, but for me this past year did just the opposite. I remember writing on New Years before we were graced with 2013 and I was begging the year to bring me something good. I wanted to be able to rid myself of lingering feelings for that unattainable newspaper reporter and I wanted to find pleasure in simply being me. I wanted to become someone or something that I could be proud of.

While my feels for said reporter lasted longer than I would have liked. I finally found peace with it. I no longer resented him for the way that he unknowingly led me on, or the way that he came to me house to cry over his ex girlfriend. I let it go. I let it all go.

I started to forgive myself for mistake that I had made in the past, and began to think of all of those one night stands/rendezvous as moments to learn from and move past rather than dwell on and feel somehow slutty or tainted.

Friendships with unlikely people began to sprout up in every facet of my life. I didn’t feel embarrassed to invite strangers over or to start spending time with co-workers. It didn’t take long for me realize that everyone is looking for a friend or someone to spend time with. If you make a gesture, it will be returned.

Many evenings in 2012 and early into 2013 I spent with tears in my eyes as I convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough. It took a beautiful leather bound journal a new fountain pen, and many evenings tirelessly writing to realize that this wasn’t the case. I was looking at it in the wrong way. I was looking at everything in my life as a measure of self worth. Why was it that when a boy told me he wasn’t ready for a relationship I took that to mean there was something wrong with me? Or, when I misinterpreted signals coming from a friend of mine to mean something more, when they didn’t, I spent days blaming myself for being such an idiot. I was always too hard on myself.

Somewhere over the past year I stopped blaming myself and being so self critical. We are human. We make mistakes. There is no sense persecuting ourselves over them.

I don’t really know where I was going with all of this. But, there it is.

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musical nonsense

A few weeks ago I sat down to write a new song. I hadn’t written one in a while and it felt like it was time to add another piece to my repertoire. I scribbled down a series of lyrics that sounded beautiful to me at the time. I plucked through a number of chords on my guitar that rang well with the words. 

I then paced back and forth in my room trying to make sense of it all. Back and forth I paced. I usually don’t write music this way. Usually, there is an intended purpose from the moment my pen hits paper and my fingers touch strings. I was so confused. I couldn’t even make sense of what I had just written. I then made the conscious decision to just not bother with it. What was the point in pinning a meaning onto something just for the sake of doing it? 

It wasn’t until last night when I played the song through for the first time for my boyfriend that it all made sense. While I would rather not get into the nitty gritty details of said song, I will say this … 

We are who we are.

We have all done things in our lives that we may not necessarily be proud of. Our past may be tainted with regret, but really all that ugly stuff has made us who we are today. I think I have a lot of people in my life who doubt themselves. They see things that they have done as mistakes, when in reality all of the things they have experienced have only shaped what remarkable people they are today. We may not want to think our past has the power to dictate our future, but it certainly has the power to shape it. Whether we are full of doubt or regret, we are who we are based upon the choices that we have made. And we all must learn to live with them. Think them not skeletons in the closet. Think not cruelly of them. Don’t become full of frustration or aggression toward them. You chose to have them in your life, and you chose to be rid of them. So do that. Be rid of it. Be proud of the steps you’ve taken, and only continue to make them. Let your life go on. 

“So we are, what we are, and will be. 

So we know, what we knew all the while, 

There’s no rest in this race round ourselves 

Just the crown, and the unending trial.”