Meta: it's been a long time coming...
Written Saturday, October 9, 2021
I started writing the document that became the beginning of this blog late on the night of April 28th, 2019.
2019 was a hard year, for me; that document started as a desperate dumping ground for words I dared not utter anyplace else, and over the course of the next three months, it expanded beyond what I ever dreamed it might contain.
I wrote the final entry in that document on July 20th, 2019 - a Saturday. Those three months felt like three eternities. I still can hardly fathom how much happened in such a blindingly short time - and that was just the beginning.
The beginning of what I now think of as my actual life.
Everything else - the years of pain and loneliness and confusion - that was the prologue. The background story, the setup, the context that made everything else make sense, but wasn't really ever the point.
That document spanned 55 pages - 28,001 words.
With only minor edits and clarifications, the entirety of that document is now posted here on this blog, in the original chronological order, for the first time - as of tonight.
This evening I sat down to finish a project I barely dreamed I'd ever attempt. The present of my life is full - in mostly good ways, but not exclusively - and that has led to a considerable amount of delay in the completion of this chapter. The blog will, of course, continue; it's simply now caught up with everything I have already written.
Even though I wrote the closing entries of that document more than two years ago, there is still so much in there that rings true today. Much of it I wasn't prepared to share, until recently; but there's a new blog entry that should be written, about all of that.
Soon.
For now, these are the entries I posted retroactively today:
I feel slightly pretentious quoting my own work, but that final entry really says it all:
What a journey.
This moment, so powerful and impossible to imprison in the tiny cell of mere language.
A girl trembling, learning that yes, she is scared - but that doesn't mean not to go.
Crescendo.
Glimpses.
Peace. Trust. Love.
She is scared. And she is brave.
A smile, to no one and everyone, the purest loveliness.
And she lets go of that last blade of grass
Falls into the sky
Takes her place as the woman
Who dances in the stars
May all your journeys, now and forever, bring you to loveliness.