Whoa...I just realized that this is my first blog as a 30 year old! Dang, I'm 30 years old! Can I just tell you how awesome it is?? I have found myself over the last 6-8 weeks reflecting on the choices, people and circumstances that have brought me to where I am now. Thinking about how I got back to Amarillo is a CRAZY trip...
At the time, I think I really felt like I was crawling back home with my head as low as my expectations for what my life would be like once I was a full time resident of Amarillo again. I thought I could live here for a while to be close to my family while I waited for the real excitement to begin in my life! In the six years since moving back, quite the opposite has happened. Looking back on the person I was at the age of 24 is almost shocking. I was scared and felt terrible about myself for many reasons, Plus I was extremely overweight. I was lonely and was certain that I would always be lonely. In six years of life, I have completely shattered the shell of a person that I was in MANY WAYS! I have traveled close to 250,000 miles for various reasons since the move to Amarillo. Can I just take this opportunity to remind you that traveling allows you to grow in ways you didn't think possible?! I have made many wonderful amazing friends, friends so fantastic that I just can barely think of enough fabulous adjectives to describe how blessed I am to be a part of their awesome lives. This includes reconnecting to "old" friends, growing fabulous friendships with people who've been there all along and meeting some pretty great new friends as well. This evening for some reason I was thinking about something totally random from sometime in the past six years. I'm sure something similar to the feeling I was thinking of could be found in a journal entry, maybe multiple entries, from the past 6-8 years. Feelings of loneliness, of a deep sense of loneliness because I didn't have that "one person" to whom I could share anything with at anytime and feel no sense of guilt for ranting or raving and consuming someone's free time. I used this sense of loneliness to convince myself that the lack of such a person only intensified my feelings of loneliness. Now, I realize that my feelings are kind of a bunch of nonsense. So I don't have "one person," I have something much better than that. I have "people." People with whom I can share my life story in exchange for them sharing their story with me. People who are too many to name, for fear of forgetting someone or making someone feel unequal because of the order of my list. PEOPLE, FRIENDS, I hope that I can return to you at least 10% of what you've given me. I've really begun to notice how much I've grown as a person in the past six years. I no longer feel scared about my present, worried about my future or ashamed of my past. All of the choices that I've made have gotten me here, the mistakes and victories have all taught me something. I think I'm rambling, as I often do. I'm not sure what the "point" or "moral" of this entry is....maybe just establishing in the virtual world that I'm doing alright and thanking you fine folks for helping me get here. I really wish I could describe the feeling I had earlier this evening that inspired this entry. I just felt like God has spent the last six years dragging my sorry little butt in a broken red wagon through the mud and now I understand why it had to happen just this way. Although, in my metaphor, I'm not sure that it is very clear what I needed to go through the mud. Maybe the mud fixed the wheel on the wagon....or helped me hide the wagon from the Indians sent to ravage the town that I live in as a sad, helpless widow in the midst of the cruel winter of 1864....
So maybe, I've been reading a lot lately....
Until next time!
