I preface this by writing one thing: there may be other useful ways to spend my time. At least according to some. But this is just my journey. I have to stop apologizing for who I am.







I’ve never been a delicate flower. Not until now.







I’ve been taught, over and over again, just like any other woman in this society, that women should be delicate flowers, that they should bend to the wind in order to be appreciated for their beauty. As if they have no choice but to humbly acquiesce to the other forces of nature.







I have always prided myself on understanding the balance of nature, that there cannot be fire without air, or air without water, or earth without fire, et cetera. That is all true. Without the wind, there would be no flowers. But I am re-training my brain to remember that without flowers, there would be no wind. You really, truly, can’t have one without the other.







All of a sudden, in so little time, the balance in me has shifted; I’ve become the extreme that I always hoped to strive for, and realize now is such a crock of shit. Is so antithetical to my nature. Is so – unnatural.







I don’t give myself enough credit. The entire time I was writing my wedding vows, I was thinking, “I should be much more profound than this. I am just sucking at this.” Then I proceeded to write, “[He] is like the Earth and I am like the Wind – there cannot be one without the other.” And it sounded just cheesy at the time, so I thought, “God, aren’t I more than just a cheesy piece of shit?” – but subconsciously I knew that it was true and that I wouldn’t have said it – or, rather, thought it – if it hadn’t been true.







All that I am writing, at this very moment, is truth. My truth. If other people read closely enough, and put themselves where I am, they would feel this truth. It is my job to bring this truth into the light, to not be afraid of it. To bring the sun onto the vampire lair. Screw those vampires. Deprive them of what they need to survive – darkness. Bring on the sun!







My newest motto, these days, is: “Don’t be afraid of your own truth.” And I haven’t been afraid. I’ve been staring that truth in the face, every day, maybe not all day every day, but every day. Sometimes I see horrible, unspeakable monsters and sometimes I see some beauty and sometimes I’ve been really incensed at what I’ve become and other times I’m proud of how far I’ve come.







And that, in essence, is what life is truly about – realizing how far you’ve come and realizing how much further you have yet to travel, and accepting that. And more than accepting that about yourself – perhaps much, much more – is realizing and appreciating that journey in others. It’s not all about you. Except it is, to a certain extent, because you are an animal and you are forced to be self-reliant, and you have to be selfish to some degree because you have to preserve yourself. But in order to preserve yourself you have to nurture everything else around you. You have to nurture yourself and nurture those around you, simultaneously. And therein lies the key.







When you lose that strength to preserve yourself, when you become a ghost of who you once were, when there is nothing left of you but a skeleton rotting away under a desert sun, it is then time for you to accept the help of others. Because those people know a different truth, a truth that may save your life.