I've been thinking about the weight of my last post since I made it all those years ago. I've thought about the hate in it, and the simple cut offs that happened between people who used to mean something to one another. People don't end like that and there are reconnections, old feelings that are embers smoking under the surface. I know that's corny, but it's the only image I have because it's the only one that fits for me. I miss this blog and my band of friends who were my only readers. I miss feeling funny and navigating adulthood as a naive girl growing into a woman.
I have lost touch with a lot of people to my right.
Todd and I don't speak. And he doesn't speak with Jaccob, or any of the other guys to the right.
Alura and him divorced.
Kyle and I continue to intermittently talk. We piss each other off and then reconnect as if we didn't wish the other died.
Jaccob and I are still together and engaged.
I quit Target shortly after that last post. Had a string of dead-end jobs and now I work in storage.
If I had kept up this blog and wrote about my two-year stint when I worked at Super 8, this blog would have become viral. I have so many stories of police, drugs, sex, etc.... A missed opportunity.
One more semester in college and I will graduate after eight years of trying.
River is still my little truffle pig. We have traveled to Colorado with her via car, and Panama City Beach, FL via car. (She didn't like the ocean.) She's now nearly six-years-old. She's curled in the nape of my leg, snoring.
That last post had so much sadness and deadends. Life isn't that way. I have come to see that. I learned that through the endless amount of medication doctors prescribed me before, I found out that I wasn't bipolar, I was just anxious. I had too many feelings, and like a child, I couldn't translate them well. After years of therapy, I'm a little hippie. I listen to people. I don't say to people to wait for their kids to die. I want people to live. I actually write about poverty and its effect on masculinity, femininity, and gender. I want to learn about intersectionalities, and what makes a person's decision. If we are quiet and listen, we learn from people. I think the Dali Lama said that or something. I wish I could have done that then. I hardly remember those first couple years after my father passed away. I just remember this secondary emotion: anger. I just could never figure out what the first one had been. I think sometimes it was jealousy that my friends were just normal. They didn't have any afflictions and they could sleep and they could go to parties and enjoy themselves. And sometimes, it was my sadness.
It's funny, I still hear my dad sing along to our favorite songs, but I also hear his screams if I make a mistake. The dead are with us in memory, the good and bad.
I'm nearly 30-years-old. When I made that post I was in my early 20s and still navigating what adulthood meant.
The take away from all this is that I hope you all can look in your past and learn from all the hate you've had and wonder where it came from. Mine came from confusion. And I don't ever want to feel that hate again. That anger. I want acceptance.