I have learned some incredible lessons about forgiveness.
Forgiveness does not care about how, or what, or when, or why. Forgiveness cares only about progress. Progression away from negative feelings, away from negative situations. Progress that is about rebuilding the things that need rebuilt, mending the holes created in memory.

Forgiveness changes you, changes your outlook. Forgiving yourself, forgiving others, it's a way of leaving behind some of the baggage that held you back.

---

I have forgiven, and where I kept all of that baggage packed away, the sun now shines.

Looking toward the end

There are so many things I want to say, apologies I want to make. It scares me. I am terrified of the responses I could get, whether or not they are what I hope for. I don't know what to do, or how to do it. Thirteen years is so long, but is it too long?

I want to find out who I am, and I may need there help to find the pieces that are still missing. I just need to find the strength to make the first step.





I don't want to fall...

Community

I think the largest part of my lack of consistent updating is that I don't have a community. I have a kid, but I don't want to spend my life identifying myself as his mom. I knit, but not enough to write about. I'm fat, but not a size acceptance activist. I'm having trouble getting pregnant, but not a medical intervention infertility type. I'm a nerd, but who the hell blogs about that unless they are the techie sort?

I want a community, but am too shy, and can't seem to find my voice alone.

Ramble, ramble, ramble, STOP!

It's all coming too fast. October is getting here, and I am not ready for it. I feel like I need to do something on the fifth, but I don't know what, or how, to... I don't even know how to talk about it here. Even when I am somewhere like this, where I have the space to myself, I have a hard time talking about it.
On October 5, 1995 my mother died. This is a fact. This year, on October fifth, it will be FIFTEEN YEARS. FIFTEEN! That right there is more years with her gone than I was alive when she died. Fifteen. Good word. It really just leaves me struck dumb to think about it. To think that I was just shy of thirteen the last time I saw my mother. The last time I fought with her, and that is what we did that morning. I don't blame myself like I used to, even though she did kind of blame me, I don't think she entirely knew what the end result would be. I'm kind of over it now, kind of past the pain, and yet I never grieved properly. There is still a lot of hurt left, but I suspect that won't ever go away.
FIFTEEN years. Damn. I just keep looking at it and I can't wrap my head around it...
---
And then twenty days after that, my baby turns ten. TEN! I don't know how I am going to deal with all of this when it lands on my doorstep. TEN & FIFTEEN!! I think it just might kill me, heh. The baby itch is only ramping up now that my baby is going to be a pre-teen. All the more reason to keep walking. (I am infertile at my present weight, and that is actually what brought on the exercise in the first place. I want to have another baby before I'm thirty, and it is getting pretty damned close!)

My life, much like my head, is in a constant state of everywhere at anytime. I just hope I can keep holding on and see November in with whatever sanity I have left. I get to have Christmas this year, and I'll be damned if I don't do it up HUGE to make up for being too poor to do it last year.

Who I am

I've been trying to take off some weight, and it has made me reflect on who I am.
I've been a fat girl for so long that it has become a precious part of me. I will always be a fat girl, physically, because that is how I was built to be. I won't give it up because I don't need to. I do, however, need to take off a good sixty pounds in order to feel fully healthy again. It's not easy...
About a month ago I started walking an hour or three miles a day, three or four days a week. It did wonders at first, and the first five pounds just disappeared. Now I am stuck in flux between seven and ten pounds lost, and it is really driving me batty. Walking is obviously not cutting it for me anymore, and I have no idea what to do.

On top of all this, amidst the frustration that comes with trying to stay motivated, is the feeling that I am not being true to myself. I am not doing this to look good, because I think I am attractive. I'm not doing this because society tells me to, it is a decision I am making for myself. It is just so damned hard. I can't afford to go to a gym, I can't afford equipment, and I have tried using workout videos on Netflix, but let's be real here, THOSE VIDEOS ARE FOR PEOPLE IN DECENT SHAPE. Obese people have balance issues, and all that swinging fat certainly doesn't help. I know I can complain here, because no one hears me.
WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?!

I guess I'll try and dance my ass into exhaustion for another fifteen minutes. Maybe half an hour a day of pure ass busting will do something.

I certainly hope so, anyway.

Wishes

I continue to read blogs, and to lurk, because I feel like nothing I have to say is unique and that alone makes it worthless.
--
Today I watched Julie & Julia and it really made me feel like I was missing out on something. As though my hesitation and fear of having to actually interact with people in order for them to want to interact with me was something I could overcome.
Alas, my eternal social awkwardness prevails.
I have so many things to say, so many words swirling around, and yet... and yet, I feel like saying them at all is just setting myself up for disaster. "Who would want to read what you have to say?" or, "What makes you special enough that anyone should read these words?" It's not that I am lacking in personality, or even likability, I just lack something so basic that there isn't even a word I know of to describe it. I guess it could be confidence, but I don't think that's it at all. I just have a hard time creating bonds with people. I don't have poor self worth, and yet I feel like I have nothing special to offer anyone.

I am just a lonely little blogger, who is afraid to say anything in case it ends up being nothing at all.

I woke up this morning with an earworm from a song I haven't heard in months.
I woke up with the ghosts of my bitter teenage choices tearing at my heart. If you could hear the way everything sounds swirling around my head the jumbled mess would likely drive you mad. I don't know what to make of resurgence of these feelings.
Some fantastic place... and the faces of the people I let myself lose. I was young and angry. I was bitter and hurting, and they should have known better. They should have clung tighter instead of loosening their grip. They should have given me every reason to want to stay a part of her family. Instead they loosened, and in my clouded judgment I let myself drift away.
I don't know if what I want now is to try and fit myself into their lives, or fit them into mine, I just know that my mother's death resulted in so much more loss than it ever should have. I lost her people, my people, and my son lost his history before his story even began.

I have dreams about bringing an infant girl to a family party, her family's party. I dream of my son dazzling them with his charm and my daughter being the center of attention. I don't have a daughter, and I don't have my family, and yet the dreams remain.

I've lost so many people who were important, and only two of them through death. I ran from my family when things got hard, instead of running to them, and now they're all gone.

My heart and soul ache for the love I used to have, but squandered with youthful foolishness.