where to even begin

when you haven't written a word in over a year, looking at everything you want to get off your chest is like looking at a forest of trees.

there is just so much.

you tell yourself to start at the beginning, but where is the beginning? everything connects and intertwines and relates. because life is like that. we like to make it cut and dry. chronological. black and white. but that is not my life experience. finding the beginning would be like running in a circle trying to find the start. never begins. never ends.

i wish i had that cut and dry chronological story. but that doesn't seem to be happening for me, and that is okay. i have no choice but for that to be okay, i suppose. i just know that story has led me to where i am not the same person that wrote a year ago. that is why i'm here.

the person i see a year ago is a person walking in the status quo even if she didn't feel like she was. i felt like i was different, a rebel. people told me i was, my own family told me i was, but i think i just wore that on the surface like clothes i could take off when it didn't suit me. i pretended to be a real mess while polishing up my life till it shone. but wearing the rebel clothes and owning my fake mess planted a seed that has grown into something huge.

i come from a community of wealth, of white privilege, of "faith" (whatever that means, sometimes i can't tell), of conservative values. as a teenager and college student i grew away from those things a bit, especially my conservative fundamental upbringing. i recognized their toxicity, so i spoke out. i got labeled the hippie and the liberal.

but still, i had internalized all those things i grew up with. they still festered in my heart and set me on my life path. get married early, have a perfect family, a perfect home, a strong faith. value appearances even though you say you don't. value honesty, even if honesty looks like being honest about some things and hiding a lot of the rest.

i was a fake rebel.

some of you know that a few years ago, abuse in our church led my strong faith to get shaken a bit. i was putting it all back together. i was working towards having all those things that i was supposed to value, still. but it put me on a path of searching and learning, and the more i searched and learned the more i couldn't get it out of my head

who am i?

what in the hell am i doing?

do i still believe all this stuff, really?

what is this life i have built?

is this really the life i want?

am i happy?

and the sad part is a lot of those questions i couldn't answer. i did what i was supposed to, right? i have everything i'm supposed to have, right? i should be happy, right? everyone else is happy... right?

i couldn't decide what to do. keep up appearances? shatter the facade and bare my honest heart, that now makes me look i have split personalities? so i stopped writing altogether.

but still i searched and wondered and learned. that is what the last year has seen me do. search and wrestle and make terrible mistakes and grow and make more mistakes and piece life together.

somehow.

and now i'm so far from the person who used to write that i am starting over. that's why i don't know her. my questions and my searching left her somewhere along the road and i know i'll never find her again. i left the rebel clothes that screamed "i'm raw, i'm honest, i'm different, i'm a mess!" and picked up a heart that said all of those things in truth.

and now i'll write.