I'm not the girl that I intend to be.
I feel like I am finally on the way to figuring it out. Life is not a roller coaster, it is an obstacle course. It is not a series of things you go through to get to the end, it is a series of things you choose to get past and get over, or you stay right where you are. Trying to get there is so much more important than looking at all the things in my way. I may never get where I am trying to go, but that doesn't mean I should just not try to get there at all. I am such a hopeful person, I hope all the time, I love finding the good in things. I am one of very few people I know who believe 100% in the good of people until I just can't anymore. I get so much crap for giving people seemingly "undeserved chances". Doesn't everyone deserve to be believed in? Doesn't everyone deserve at least someone to hope for the best in/of them? Everyone deserves the chance to be better than the worst someone thinks of them. Everyone deserves the chance to surprise you. Even my dad, I can't give him any more chances, I am after all only human. I think even he deserves someone to believe the best in him. I think I have a lot of people who believe in me wholeheartedly. Sometimes as much as I believe in everyone else, I just can't find the faith to believe in myself. Part of my obstacle course is learning to trust myself, to believe in myself enough to stand up for my thoughts and ideas. I have over the years gotten much better at being myself, at realizing I am my own particular brand of weird and that is totally fine. I was always weird and trying to cover it up. It took me a long time to stop being afraid that one person not loving me meant I wasn't worth being loved. The deep seeded fear the ones who left me and disliked me were the right ones, and I had everyone else fooled. Some people just don't like me. My friend Josh told me something a while back, He told me that as many times as I may feel, oh this girl is prettier or smarter or sweeter or more whatever that it doesn't matter, there will always be someone who is more of something that I am, but there is no one in the entire world who has my exact combination of pretty and smart and sweet and something. It was probably the nicest and most useful thing anyone has ever said to me, and I think about it every time I get insecure. I am special because I am me, and there is no one else as me as I am. It seems like such a simple concept, but it changed my entire way of thinking. Tragedies happen to everyone, that is the way of life, it has nothing to do with what kind of person you are. Being a good person is not circumstantial, you don't get to be a good person only when you are happy only when everyone else is pleasant. The hard parts are what matter, having faith, love, hope, kindness, forgiveness and charity because it is needed, not because it is deserved. Today I have decided to do something I never thought I would be able to do, but when lightning strikes...