a years worth of reflection...

At this time last year I was a mess about turning 30. I made the vow to myself last year to make a lot of changes.  And I have made many.  I cut off a foot and a half of my hair and donated it, went through 4 or so hair colors, dropped 30 pounds, have several new tattoos ... and finally started caring again about how I looked and how I presented myself.  My tattoos all have meaning, they are all pieces of where I am in life right now and a reminder that it is OK to actually be honest about what I feel, but that it may also hurt to be that honest.  There is catharsis in tattooing my soul onto my skin.  Physical pain is generally easier to handle then the actual anguish that served as the inspiration behind them.

I realized last year that I had moved so far away from who I really am and who I wanted to be that I was barely recognizable anymore.  Not all of the changes that I have made and still need to finish putting into action are pleasant... they are difficult life changes in so many ways.  Will power and patience are a powerful thing, especially when there is a long road ahead with no guarantees of what will happen at the end.  There are far too many people in my life that have remained because I do not like to hurt people, even when they hurt me.  And there are times that I lash out at the people that matter most over the smallest things because it hurt more than it should have.  I still have a lot of anger (Irish... going to always fight that battle) and I am trying not to let all of the pain that I am working through get the better of that temper... It's not gone well for me recently.

I am not proud of some of the choices that I have made, nor of some of the bridges that I have burned, but I have come to understand that those are necessary for me to really be happy and stay in that place.

I have opened old wounds, only to realize why I had those scars in the first place.  Most of all, I have come to the realization that until I learned to put myself first, I was always going to be a doormat.  I have also learned that I have support in places that I did not know I had, and that some of the support that I thought I had was superficial and judgmental...

In all of the last 12 months, I am happy with the path that I have started on, and will continue down.  It's so easy to be irrational and just leap without looking.  I don't have that luxury... one of the joys of not being a kid anymore.  I don't need anything to be easy.  I just need it to be worth the work that it took to get there. I have been the lowest of lows this year, and I know that I haven't seen my last day like that... but as long as I stay focused on what I really want... eventually it will just be a memory of the struggle and what I went through to have everything that I wanted and needed.