Dignity in Discomfort

So my birthday is tomorrow.  28 years old.  I have mixed emotions about this.  This past year as been, quite honestly, one of the best I’ve had thus far.  There are a number of reasons for this…my professional life (if you can call it that) is taking an interesting turn, I’ve finally crawled out of the darkness that dominated my heart, I have rediscovered parts of myself that I was certain were lost and had forgotten.  However, I’m very apprehensive about the coming year.  It’s somewhat exciting in that I don’t really know what is going to happen, but in the same breath it’s also extremely frightening.  I wrote the following rambling confession while flying home a few weeks ago.  It does an adequate job summing up how I’ve been feeling recently.  Taking stock of the past, the present and preparing for the future.

Five years ago, I allowed who I was to be taken from me.  I let myself, my essence slip away.  In what I thought was love and devotion I lost everything that I was.  My passions were belittled, my dreams were deemed unworthy, the person that I was became offensive and threatening to one specific person so I shuddered everything that I was into a recess of my mind so remote that I thought it was hopelessly lost.  I became a shadow of my former self, alive but not living, working and succeeding but without passion or purpose .

I look back on this period of my life with shame and disappointment.  I often cringe at the memories of this time knowing that I let that happen, that I let myself believe the lies that were said to me by this person.  That I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t attractive, I wasn’t funny, that my thoughts and passions were simple and unworthy.  It amazes me that we can let one person damage us so much.  I bare a fair amount of scars from that period of my life, though I’ve learned to conceal them well. 

I walked through my own personal hell when that relationship ended.  I emerged damaged and weak but from that experience I have found strength.  Through some odd twist of fate I found a handful of wonderful people who have given back to me that which I had lost.  Of these few, some are aware of the intense gratitude I have for their friendship and their presence in my life while others are not.  To those who remain unaware, I strive to find the right moment to say thank you - though the phrase, in my opinion, is inadequate. 

Until then I am grateful, so incredibly and immeasurably grateful to those who reminded me that I am loved, who have given me back my love of poetry and music, who have supported me in my unorthodox subject of study, embraced my odd sense of humor and my wild oscillations between fits of child like enthusiasm for life and my serious discussions of deep theoretical musings.  To you all, I can only say I love you.  Whether you live near or far, you will always remain apart of me.  While I am still not yet whole, I am so much closer because you have been in my life.  Cheers, twenty-eight.  Let’s see what this year brings.