I like using social medias like Reddit and tumblr because online it’s easy to get lost in the noise. And I like the thought that I can put my feelings out into the void and very few people will acknowledge them. It’s easier to write these thoughts when I know there’s a slim chance anyone will see, but it’s not quite zero either. Maybe that makes me a coward. Confronting issues head on is only a good idea when you understand how to keep your emotions in check and handle it maturely. So maybe it makes me a good strategist, too. Outsmarting the anger that would ruin any confrontation.

Or probably it just makes me one more twentysomething figuring their shit out, slowly and painstakingly.

I also like the fact that I can go back and read the bullshit things I thought and said, even just a year ago. So much has changed. A, if I ever talk to you again, the biggest thing I’d have to say to you is: you were right. I’m finally far enough that I can fucking say it with my chest. You were right. The difference between a 23 year old and a 20 year old is VAST. It’s incomprehensible when you’re the twenty year old and it’s blatantly obvious when you’re the twenty three year old. I cringe to think of how arrogant I was with what little knowledge I had at the time. At least now I know that I don’t know jack shit about the world yet and I can own it. Every day is another chance to learn to be better. And my mother. She was right too. It’s a fucking BITTER pill to swallow, turning around and realizing someone who hurt you was right about some very important things. She had me fucked up for so long. She’s getting better now. It’s the ugly side of me that wishes she wasn’t. I’m furious that she’s getting better and now we have to move on. I wasn’t done being hurt, goddammit. I wasn’t done grieving the person I was before she gaslit the shit out of me. I wasn’t done grieving the child I was.

I’m trying to balance this out with positives like the fact that she’s getting better and making progress but it all ends up the same upset rant. Perhaps I’m not done being angry, still.

All that to say the growth that I’ve managed over the last four years has been won bitterly. Every single step forward was met with resistance like I’ve never wanted to imagine feeling. From getting tossed in the psych ward by my own family to losing friends I thought would be there till we got old. I’ve been fucked over, put on a pedestal, played the villain, played the hero. Played the fucking love interest for too many people who didn’t want me, just wanted what they thought I was. And I had enough. It’s ridiculous of me to have assumed that any progress would be met with pleasantries and a walk in the park before lunch.

But I was (read:am still) young. And I’ve been volunteering to have my heart and soul ripped from me since I was even younger. Learned how to grieve as a child, improperly, and am having to relearn what it means to really lose something you care about and how to take care of myself through it. I am my own ally, the only one left standing at the end of the day. And everything changed when I learned to start goddamn advocating for myself. The progress. Holy Christ. It’s given me whiplash. I was scared it would rob me of my ability to understand people but that insecurity is old news and better off archived. Old habits can choke on my dick.

I don’t know who I am right now but I know who I’m NOT. Slowly ruling things out until the only thing left is what I am, under every version of me that ever had to exist to make a way for the next one. See, this is what I mean. It sounds pompous and self important, I’m not sure it ever WONT. But goddammit, I’m proud of myself. I’m also terrified of what I have to face next.

Cheers to not knowing fuck about shit and owning it. I got a lot to learn yet.