"Coming Out" as a Writer

Turning 25 has been quite the enlightening experience. You can call me Buddha. :) More traumatic than the actual birthday was the anticipation of it all. What had I honestly accomplished in my life prior to this milestone? What did I have to show besides an okay job and a lackluster love life? Besides having a phenomenal family and incredible friends, I had my writing. And now it was time to share it with the world. I realized that my focus needed to be less about what I hadn't done and more about what I was going to do in the next 5 years.

Since I could hold a pencil in my hand, I've been writing. I recall my preteen days thinking I would be the next writer of Beverly Hills, 90210. And believe me I tried although I don' t believe my scripts would be racy enough for today's television. My passion for writing continued as I began chronicling my life, my feelings, and my emotions in my first journal at age 15. It started out as meaningless chatter about who liked and who and who we "couldn't stand" and all those things that high school girls obsess about. Gradually, it began to be my place of refuge from the chaos that was my life. Things I could not bear to share with even my closest friends were deposited onto the pages of my journal. Over the years, I continued to write and eventually I began to see the growth.

I have often thought that my experiences were relatable - the questions I asked myself, the situations I encountered, the feelings I harbored - and that perhaps I could use them to help others, like myself, navigate through this sometimes exciting, sometimes tumultuous twentysomething existence.

So I started with my closest friends. I reached out to those who had known me the best over the years and shared my deepest feelings about life and lessons learned. The inspiration and positive response I received from them sparked me to do this - go public. Hopefully, this endeavor will touch your heart and bring a laugh, smile, or knowing sigh. Keep the faith girls! The best is yet to come!

A Decade of Lessons Learned

The girl I was at fifteen, emotional, yet strong, naïve, yet smart, confident, yet insecure, complex in my thoughts and feelings, felt incomplete and longed to have a boyfriend mostly for the sake of having a boyfriend. She couldn’t wrap her psyche around the concept of how less attractive and less charming girls could have that one thing she wanted and knew she deserved to have.

Even at times of weakness, the woman I am now is still puzzled by the matter, except now I realize that my life is complete. I am incredibly fortunate and beyond blessed to have incredible, supportive, and loving family and friends that fill my life with joy and laughter. I have a bright future with limitless possibilities and amazing experiences to encounter. I’m just ready for someone to add to and build on all the wonderful things already in existence.

She wished she was older, established, and stable and had created scenarios of weddings and million dollar careers and every other fairy tale ending she’d seen in romantic comedies. I’m sure she never could have imagined that the woman she would be 10 years later would be older, but not really established, and only stable after years of ups and downs and self healing, and lacking that fairy tale ending.

If the past 10 years has taught me anything, it is that life is not a fairy tale. Embrace that. Real life is about heartbreak and heartache and the strength of character you develop in your struggles enables you to sincerely appreciate the happiness and fulfillment that real life also brings.

As a girl of fifteen, wanting a boyfriend was also about wanting someone to buy me roses for Valentine’s Day so I could walk around the hallowed high school halls and have everyone look at me and think, “she’s lucky.” That girl envisioned nights of romance and love complete with candlelight and roses and the possibility of proposals.

The twenty five year old woman I have become, realizes that life isn’t so simple. Roses die. Candles go dim. And it isn’t so much about the ring, but what it represents. This woman doesn’t envision the colors of the flowers, nor the entrées being served at the reception, but she can vividly see a marriage and building a life with someone special, which is by far more important. The rest will fall in place in good time.

At fifteen, I sought love with the ones who were “hot” and hopefully nice guys too.

As a woman of twenty five, I have learned a lot about life and relationships and what matters in the grand scheme of life. Now the hottest guy is the one who can entertain me with good conversation, and still makes my heart flutter. When it’s not about where we will be spending the night, but about how I like to spend my time and what makes him smile.

In retrospect, while the girl I used to be had her flaws, had her misunderstandings, and had some jade colored glasses, she was stronger than she gave herself credit for and wiser than she allowed herself to believe. But because of who she was and what she felt and what she experienced, no matter how difficult, she enabled me to become the me that is happy, independent, and capable of handling whatever life has to offer next.

Today...

There’s nothing wrong with looking forward to the future and anticipating the new and exciting phases of your life. Your sweet 16. Prom. Going to college. Turning 21. Graduating from college. Meeting the one. Marrying the one. Starting a family. But at some point you finally realize, that everything happens to you at exactly when it is supposed to happen. Although sometime that is tough medicine to swallow and you might doubt yourself or your future, appreciate that you aren’t on someone else’s clock. You only are on the one that beats to your heart. You may not understand it. You may not see the plan. But it is in place for your good and will work out beyond your expectations in a way you could not have imagined. In the meantime, enjoy now. Enjoy that you can fly across the country to visit a friend at a moments notice. Enjoy that you can blow $300 on a purse you really like, when you really want it and not feel guilty. Enjoy that you are in the place you are supposed to be in learning what you are supposed to learn because it will all fall into place. And when it does, you do not want to look on your past and wonder what you missed by worrying about your future. Don’t let today pass you by.