I'm sitting here tangled in my bedding, my hair pulled back in a messy bun from the gym. I've been working on this piece for weeks now, and I'm pretty sure the notepad in my phone has a literal dozen different beginning paragraphs for it. In a desperate attempt to break my writer's block, I've turned on music that's faintly dancing in the background. Though I feel like I've got a million things to say, I'm quite honestly struggling to find the words to begin with.

My head tilts downward, chin resting on my chest, shoulders heaving upwards, and in a whoosh I just, sigh.

Life is...

Unexpected. Uncharted.

Two years ago, I wrote "Raw". I remember opening the notepad in my phone (there's a trend here if you're noticing), and I realized I wasn't being the best version of myself. Hell, I wasn't even being a version of myself. I had no idea who "Amanda" was, but I desperately wanted to. I knew to get there, it was going to be a hard and painful path. The shattering realization that I had to make some life-altering and uncomfortable changes shook me to my core. It was shortly thereafter that I completely derailed the life I was living, and had been for the last 6 years. I headed in an entirely different direction. I lost friends, I lost family, I became the bad guy...and I finally stepped into my skin for the first time ever in my life. I had no freaking idea what I was doing, but I knew that I have one life on this earth to live, and I wasn't going to waste it.

This past year has felt like an entire lifetime. An eternity. Seriously. Somehow due to this year feeling as if it creeped slowly along; time manipulated and stretching. I could close my eyes right now and tell you every single moment, those very singular "time stands still" moments that I healed or grew. Even those moments that were hyper-minuscule; tiny little epiphanies. Were you to tell me right then in any of those moments, that I'd be where I am now emotionally, physically, and mentally...I'm quite positive that I wouldn't have even been able to comprehend what you were saying, let alone believe you.

It's been a journey. It's pretty damn intense, that when you're determined to develop spiritually and embrace yourself, how much you can really do. I'm unwaiveringly confident now, I'm finally on the path I'm supposed to be for the rest of my life. At least now, I know who I am, I know who I want to be, and I know how I want to treat others. I imagine I was at the end of a path, behind where I should of been, and this last year I finally caught up. I've happened upon a lot of realities, and even more importantly I've learned some life-changing lessons. One lesson, I would have been grateful to learn a little younger, and it took me far longer to learn than I'd like to admit.

This lesson is that you can't will or love people so hard, they change.

This is where you say "No shi*, Sherlock".

I know. I KNOW. I knowww.

For a long time, I was confused by the literalness of it. I'm a healer. So when I'd see pain, sadness, or loneliness my heart just ached and instantly there'd be this overwhelming desire to "fix" or help someone "change". My heart is this huge, sensitive, squishy thing that just loves to love. What I didn't realize, is that it's not my responsibility to change or fix someone. Regardless of how much they mean to me, or how badly I want to help them.

I'd keep getting lost, holding on, waiting for people to become something else than they were, or even at times wanted to be. I'd make excuses for their destructive immature behavior, or how poorly they'd speak to or treat me. I refused to accept the true colors of others, and would hold onto what at times was their very little good. I'd romanticize people who were hurting me. Worse, I'd give myself, my love, my time, to those who didn't even see my worth. Sacrificing and slowly losing bits of myself. I created this twisted truth in my mind, that if I had things to improve of myself, that I was working towards, then wouldn't those people too?

Real world. Some people stay the same. Forever.

Then one day this year, it hit me like brick wall. No one ever, even if they tried, had been able to heal my hurt. Only when I started studying, and stepping outside myself, increasing my self-awareness did I really begin to heal. At last, I discovered that people are innately who they are. Only influenced by their own desire and will, can they improve themselves and heal their own souls. If together, we are only two halves, we don't make a whole. We're just two broken pieces. You can't love something or someone so deeply, or hope so fiercely, that it makes it into what you're wanting.

Healing only can come from inside the very person who needs to heal. For years, I gave, and gave, and gave, and gave. At times, I'd even change myself for others, due to a void of knowing my worth and lacking self-love. Which caused this sickening unrealistic chain reaction of expectations I'd therefore end up placing on others. I was projecting who I expected myself to be, onto them. It's a liberating sense of awareness, when you let go of expecting people to be a certain way. It's enough of a challenge, enough self-sacrifice, to put expectations on myself. When I focus solely on my own expectations of who I want to be, I learn to know and love myself. Therefore, I attract people like me. Creating this beautiful rippled flow of souls trickling into my life, that actually belong there.

I realized that though I have this deep old soul, we're each here to live our own path. Make our own way. Only when those select few open themselves in a healthy way to me, should I then in love and within the healthy limits of boundaries I've set for myself, help someone heal.

Healing Myself

Somewhere along the way in my younger years, I had developed unconsciously this unrealistic version of myself that I thought I needed to become. To be honest, I can't even pinpoint where it all originated. Perhaps bits and pieces from those in my life that I felt influenced by. However, a contributor I'm sure was the little girl inside of me that just wanted to be loved and accepted. Love and acceptance. Two things I didn't really grow up with.

For the first time in my life, almost exactly a month away from my 32nd birthday, I now know undoubtedly exactly who I am. The exuberant joy I'm finding, is that when I embrace myself; the more I grow, and the more I heal. There was an "a-ha" moment for me along the way in 2019, where I realized only I can validate myself. A brief glimpse of vulnerability here, I was naive and not intentionally, sought for others to teach me my worth. As if how another felt or saw me, is what gave my being meaning and soulful purpose. Embarrassing. From that grew self-confidence, and overwhelming understanding of self-worth.

Boom.

My Second Lesson

I don't think that one day, I just forgot how to live in the present. I genuinely believe I've never lived in the present until that of recent. I can be a bit of an over-thinker. Okay, maybe it got a bit out of control there for a little.

I'm working on it.

A thought would come into my mind, my trauma would be ignited, my guard would go up...I'd spiral. I'd close up, and lock people out. I had to learn to challenge myself. I had to learn that I am not my thoughts. My thoughts were my programming and I was dwelling in a state of "what if", I was continuously living in the past for the fear of the future. I realized the more I tried to ignore a thought, the more it'd consume me. Now, when a thought enters my mind I accept it for it's sadness, or anxiety, or happiness. Then I let it go. Our thoughts are meant to come and go, be felt and be forgotten.

I get to choose who I am. I get to choose which thoughts I allow to influence me. I can live in the present and accept the fact that life is an unwritten journey I can never predict. I've always loved life. I thrive off building relationships with others. I want an existence full of all uniquely different people, living vastly different paths. I want to be surrounded by those with a transcendence of being a good person.

In 2020, I want to become more intuitive, to grasp a more in-depth meaning of love, to accept life as it presents itself, to release that and who which has served it's purpose, to manifest every new opportunity to grow, and experience every single beautiful thing, place, and emotion this life can give me.