Stopgaps

Crap.  I went away for two years- just stopped writing.  I'm so sorry.  I don't think that I can do anything or say anything that would make you understand.  When I started this blog *gulp* three long years ago, I was still so broken.  Every time I tried to write about what was truly eating at me, I couldn't.  I put it off and put it off because I was still in love with, still heartbroken over, the first girl to bring down all my barriers.

By starting this blog, I tried to give myself a space to explore all the other things that were going on inside me.  All of my daily gender struggles, my issues with my sexuality- I turned to you as a community for strength, guidance and compassion, and I'm thankful for all you've given me.

When I left, I had just had surgery.  It was hard for me to eat, physically, and I could feel the old habits of my anorexia creeping back up on me.  While I've never been diagnosed or hospitalized, anorexia is never very far from my mind.  The opportunity handed to me on a silver platter, to relapse with a perfectly good and unquestionable excuse, was too hard to pass up.  I lost forty pounds.  I felt amazing.  As with all things, it was a cycle.  I had to eat eventually and am now back up to my former weight.  It's been an interesting two years.  I've dated, I've learned, I've grown, I've started to heal, and I think I've become more comfortable with myself.

All those thoughts that were constantly plaguing me about who I was, about labeling myself, have faded into the background.  I am who I am and I enjoy the person I've become, for the most part.  There are always things I'm going to want to change about myself, but for now I'm not so focused on how I want to be labeled in a relationship or should be labeled.  I just act, and let things go from there.

When I started the blog I said I was going to write about being gay, because it was so new and overwhelming that I felt obsessed with it.  I feel like it overshadowed all else that I was, and sometimes it still does, but more and more sides of me are stepping into the spotlight, and that's the way I want it to be.


If you'd read my initial post from last night, you know that I had a relationship end.  She was a sweet, charming, raunchy girl that made me laugh constantly.  I don't know why I let her go, but I think that part of it was that I'm not quite healed.  So I've started something that I ached to do a long time ago, but never had the courage or conviction.

I've started writing about first:girl.  I feel like I've referred to her enough that I owe you my story, and maybe I owe it to myself to tell it.  It doesn't hurt me anymore to think about it.  I still occasionally get shivers when I think about her, or feel a warm glow when I remember her smile, but it was four years ago- long enough to feel like it happened to another person.  I'm so different now than I was then.

I hope, in telling it, the remnant of longing will disappear, and I can finally shut that door.  And perhaps all of you will finally feel like you know me as more than just words on a backlit screen, because every part of who I used to be was wrapped up in her.  I want you to know me.  I'm so sorry I disappeared, but I'm back and baring my soul for the world.