Who Am I?

These past few months I have made so many dramatic changes, it's almost difficult to remember who I am & who I've been striving to be. I'll look back & see this miserable insecure teenage girl who had absolutely no direction & no purpose to her life whatsoever, & she almost seems like a stranger. I look in the mirror & I can't tell you how long it's been since the last time I saw her staring back at me. I guess it's because I'm doing something right, or maybe she got lost somewhere along the way but regardless of what happened to her... regardless of the things she had that I didn't, or the innocence she carried that I lost a long long time ago... I don't miss her.

I mean sure, there are things about her that I miss. I miss being wanted by the ones that I wanted too. I miss feeling like there was so much to my life when at the time, there really wasn't anything to my life at all. The world just seemed so small & I felt so big & powerful that I forgot for a long time that there were billions of other people out there living the same life as me. Making the same mistakes & learning in many of the same ways. Now I'm beginning to realize there's much more to life than I thought, & there is so much more to people. People are cold, & bitter & angry & miserable. People are selfish, & jealous & proud. Then there's those few that are absolutely incredible, & reliable & strong. They walk into your life when you least expect it & they turn the world right side up again. They remind you how it feels to be happy, & suddenly you can live as if for the first time.

I try not to look to the past too often, but when i do I like to do it to learn something, or to remind myself that even though times are tough, if I've made it this far I can make it all the way. The past is full of lessons, & I'm grateful for everything I've been through because it made me so much stronger than I ever thought possible. It's given me the opportunity to live an entirely different life, & I love it. I love my life, I love the people in it. I love the opportunities I've had through the changes I've made, & I love the experiences I've had. Nobody is luckier than me, & even though everything is crashing down around me right now & around the people that I care about... we'll make it through this. We have each other, & ultimately that makes us even stronger.