At this time in my life

I've been silent for quite some time. I've read old posts and realize how my thoughts find their way to the virtual page. Most times it happens more eloquently than when I write in the pages of my journal.

My life for the last four months have been treatment and school. I haven't been to work since January 21st and, when I return, I will have been off the radar for four months. By the time I return to work I will be less than three months away from finishing the classes for my Bachelor's degree and 7 months away from finishing my internship.

The last four months I have been changing and am radically different than who I was in January. I don't know who I am, for identity is far too abstract, but I know who I am not and what I deserve.

I am not empty and I am not nothing. For so long I had seen myself as living on the peripheral of other people's life and failing their expectations but I have found myself and am able to say I have succeeded and I am successful.

My body is mine, I claim it back from those that have staked claim, or who I have surrendered it to. Those who have hurt me, betrayed me, had no right to take this away from me. I deserve to be appreciated and loved, not objectified and neglected.

I am gay. And I am able to say I have avoided intimate relationships and shut down in them, up to this point, because being so transparant with another human being has not been safe in the past, and I have not opened myself to the possibility and vulnerability to be loved. yet. I deserve to be loved and cherished.

I want to be a mom. Not to 'show up' my own mom who has never been what I need, or deserve. Not to fill the void family has not filled in my life. But to see this beautiful child grow into their own person and be a part of their growth. I want to be able to give my body over to my child as it forms inside my body, feel comfortable (at least to the point that is possible in a pregnancy), and see the process of my own body changing as beautiful.

I am not the person my family has said I am and I will never be that person. I have realized how grateful I am for this. I am forming a loving family from those around me but they will never replace those who are 'supposed' to be there. This is no fault of my own and I've accepted they will never be what I need and deserve. In the process of grieving this I have made the first real steps forward, greeted who I am meant to be, grabbed her beautiful hand, and began the journey down my own path in life. Working on becoming whole.