Long Road Home
It's strange how much changes in such a relatively short amount of time. I feel so incredibly blessed in so many ways. I feel as though some sort of curse has been lifted and I finally have the freedom to live my life. It is as though the changes within myself are what have made anything seem possible instead of the environment. I used to think that we were products of our environments and our experiences only. As time goes on I see that isn't always true. Sometimes something deep inside us wakens and we are given all that we ask for. My deep hunger for family that has always stayed at the edges of my consciousness with bitter longing seems at last to be abated. Jared's family has taken me in from day one as their own and it nearly brings tears to my eyes. They have their ins and outs just like all families but they are close and loving. On my birthday we went to Benihana for dinner. It was Jared, his brother Jason, his mom Elena, his dad Jeff, his sister Emily and her boyfriend Stevie. At the end in Benihana tradition they took a polaroid of all of us and stuck it in a card that they handed to me. It is just some poorly colored cheap polaroid but, I nearly cried. I have it at work now sitting on a shelf where I can glance up and see it. Here I am at twenty-five and we are trying to buy a little manufactured home together as that is the only thing that can be purchased for under five hundred thousand and still be owned it seems. A little place to start having something to call our own. My little brother is preparing to come out at the end of summer and I have the two best pets in the world Nikodemus and Rebel. I've changed so much from what I was just a few years ago that I seem like a totally different being. I can't even remember what it was like to be so hurt, so angry and so trapped while being wrapped up in the drama and continuous damage caused by those around me. That life is left behind and a new one has come into being. I'm glad in many ways that I had a good amount of time in between relationships to shed my old skin and grow new. Here I stand in beautiful Cali awake and alive and home at last.