10/21

There is a lot of full circle moments happening lately. Its like my life right now was taken out of my journal when I was ten and applied to my life. I know I have made it, and that doesn’t mean that I’m done growing at all, I feel like it just means I’m finally at a spot where I feel peaceful and know that this was what all of the pain that I had to go through was leading me to. I feel like I had two different dream lives when I was growing up. On one hand, I was supposed to be married by 21, have a kid by 23, and raise them up in the church, stay in my hometown, and be mediocrely happy. I feel like that life that I dreamed fo Is see many people around me having and it no longer pulls me in like it used to. It almost sounds like torture. There a lot of things that haven’t happened that I thought I would need to happen for me to feel like my life is finally is everything that I wanted it to be. I thought I’d have a long term boyfriend. I thought that I would live that the beach. I thought that I would go to church. I thought a lot of things, but now that I am able to take a step back, I thought those things because those were the dreams of SLO county and I inherited those dreams from friends and the people I looked up to that were around me. I feel like I didn’t have an original thought until I was 16. Growing up is crazy. I wonder what my sixteen year old self would say- probably surprised my boyfriend at the time now has a wife and a kid, surprised that I wasn’t jealous of the life he created, surprised that I am not afraid anymore, surprised that I actually like my friends, and surprised that deep deep down I wasn’t miserable anymore. Surprised that I actually went out and got mental help instead of soaking in the mental illness that I was told my whole life was all in my head and because I wasn’t close enough to God. Unraveling and unlearning everything that you were taught your whole life is crazy and painful. It's like meeting a whole new version of myself; a kinder, more empathetic version of myself, no longer masking my judgement and anger in religion and fear. I know God is out there but I don't know what that means for me. I don't know if I agree with what I was told he was my whole life, and that is so scary. I wish I had more answers. How could I know everything at 17 but nothing at 21.