If you just realize what I just realized....

I have been staring at this screen for about 20 minutes. It's late, and, technically, I should be asleep.

Something in me knows I need to blog. I need to write to expunge the negative energy that's managed to penetrate the impervious and bring down this ever positive Pollyanna...

So I'll just write. No pre-composing. Train of thought. Stream of consciousness.

And in the spirit of stream of consciousness writing, I have to say, I think negative is not the right term. I'm not sad or lonely or angry, etc -- I'm ready. I'm ready to face all the stuff I ignore for fear of what it means. I have said I'm ready a lot. To myself, in my blogs, to my friends. It's part of why I picked up and just moved across the country. So, it's not much of a revelation, but what is -- is that I am done with people who aren't ready.

I have spent so much of my life pleasing other people, working to make relationships work, hoping coworkers or friends or lovers would like me, or like me more, or like me enough. Done.

I have spent a lot of my time wondering why I wasn't enough for a lover, and wishing I could be thinner or prettier, or shorter or more clever, and I wasted energy on people who never cared about me the way I cared about them. I no longer have the patience to wait for someone to see something in me. If you want me, you better be prepared to say so, because I'm no longer asking.

Growing up is scary as shit. But growing up is also amazing and informative and exciting. I may not like the responsibility and finality of children and marriage right now, and I may be fearful of the tiny lines that have just barely begun forming near my eyes, and annoyed with what I have not yet accomplished and frustrated with how far I still have to go.... however I'm also growing into a woman I enjoy being, and learning to live in skin I like, and learning to work for what I want (and enjoy it!), and hold my tongue, and speak my mind, smile for real, believe in myself.... these things are coming only with time, experience and age, and I feel lucky to be me these days. That's a new feeling.

Peanut and I had a long talk tonight about all the boy drama in my life right now, and he had some amazing and sweet things to say, it's nice to see myself through his eyes sometimes. I just want to be wanted, and I want to stop asking to be wanted. The new me knows I deserve to be wanted, but there's still one tiny little pygmy vampire fluttering around in my brain saying "If you don't play by everyone else's rules, you'll never be loved".

Fuck that voice. It's wrong. I just need to keep repeating that until I believe it. Fake it till you make it.