LiveJournal Flashback

From June 2008 to July 2017, I kept a LiveJournal.

Today, I wasn't sure what to write about. Every topic I've considered hasn't felt at all authentic. Then, out of nowhere, an idea sprung to my mind: "Why don't I revive my [now private] LiveJournal account, go back to this day several years ago, and see what I wrote?"

Well, I did. And yes, I'll be sharing it with you all. But before I get into that, I've really got to get y'all up to speed re: my life, how I've been feeling recently, and why this archived LiveJournal post rings to the pitch of, Everything happens for a reason, so listen up.

So, full disclosure, here: I've been feeling strange lately. This feeling is familiar and foreign all at once—because while I've felt this way many times in life, I've never been able to pinpoint its catalyst. The root of it. The why.

Honestly, I'm the queen of self-isolating. I'm convinced it's the only time I can ever think clearly. It's my favorite response to this "strange" feeling—to escape, to run away, to slip into the frenzy of my own thoughts and follow every single thread until I'm clawing at soil and pale, tangled things.

Exactly ten years ago, on May 29, 2010, I wrote this:

Sometimes, all you have to do is listen. To yourself, to everything that has created you.

And in the beginning, you can hardly hear anything—but trust that in time, it will make itself known, and you will know exactly what it's saying. Slowly, slowly.

And eventually,

When you're in a situation that feels hopelessly wrong and you cannot make it feel right,

you will know.

That's when you need to listen the hardest, because those are the moments that define you. To pick a path that's chosen by something you cannot fully understand; to stand up for what feels right. But sometimes, it is not that easy.

When they have accepted me. When they have sacrificed so much for me. When they have loved me . . .

I cannot betray them, and therefore, I must betray myself.

Perhaps it doesn't make sense to you. Perhaps I shouldn't be writing this at all, and keep these ambiguous, tangled thoughts to myself. Because only now that I'm finished with this entry am I realizing this isn't for anybody else—it's exclusively for me.

And so was that entry ten years ago. It was for me. But not for me then.

It was for me now. It was to my future self.