So what happens now?
another suitcase in another hall
So what happens now?
take your picture off another wall
Where am I going to?
you'll get by you always have before
Where am I going to?
don't ask anymore..
It's not a happy song but it's in my head today. I love singing it. I love singing.
Thanksgiving came and went. I have so much to be thankful for. My life has taken a brilliant turn for the better in the past six or seven months, and I'm in awe of it every day. It's hard to imagine that the memories I have of this time last year are even real. Was I that unhappy? I was willfully living in a situation that actively made me unhappy. And I did it for so long!
I find it hard to not think about Justin, and my feeling towards him vary from rage to pity. It's a hard realization to come by when you discover you loved someone for what you'd hoped they would be, rather than what they actually were.
Life is so radically different now. Not just in love, which I am, and it's glorious. But as a person I have changed. Or rather, I have shed layers of falsehoods that I had been constructing for so many years. It's easy to "build walls" as they say when you are hurt or depressed or just unhappy. It's easy to put on appearances until you're not really sure where the real you begins or ends. It's all been within the past year that I fully realised what was going on and began to make a true effort to remove those constraints I'd put up for myself.
I'd stopped listening to music, finding new music, becoming attached to music, getting lost in the act of singing. I'd stopped reading. I didn't go to concerts and I couldn't dream of taking vacations. All things that I used to LOVE doing. But as time went by, they faded away. I became wrapped up in other things and forgot myself. I would cling to songs, but out of desperation, wondering if anyone else would hear it and know that it was how I felt. When Adam Duritz sings, "Oh I thought someone would notice, I thought somebody would say something if I was missing. Well can't you see me?... Could you tell me one thing you remember about me and have you seen me lately?" something inside of me would cry out for somebody, somewhere to remind me of who I was.
It sounds dramatic. It is dramatic! To slowly come to a realization that not only do you not recognise yourself, but you don't like yourself, and you don't know how to become a person who is true to herself. I feel like I've been waking up slowly over the past year and now the day is dawning. I feel alive. It's so nice to feel like every day is worth living. To feel like there are adventures to be had, and yes, I am capable of experiencing them. I feel like I'm worth something. I feel valued and loved and I value and love myself. I look in the mirror and see something normal and beautiful and happy. That in itself is monumental in such a way that I feel it should have made the news or something.
In high school I had a mirror on the back of my door. I circled where my face usually went when I looked in it and wrote "who is this girl?" on it. I didn't know. I hated myself though. I thought I was hideous and that no one would like me because I was fat and horrible and dumb and so, so shy. I look back at those days now and wish I could go back and shake myself until I woke up from that daze of "I'm not good enough." I was good enough then, but now I know that I am. And it's amazing.
That's a large part of what I'm thankful for this holiday season. | 
