Changes

I have changed so much this year. I look back now at who I was when I started this blog just under a year ago, and I hardly recognize the girl who typed the first post.

Every part of me has changed. I feel like the twelve months in 2005 were longer, more fruitful than the months in my past.

I was kicked out of love in late 2004, and spent the beginning of this year digging and clawing my way out of it. I took time by myself and worked on who I am. I was single for a long time for the first time in my life. I tended to my relationships with my friends, with my family, and with myself. And, just as I had let the search for love take a backseat to my search for me, love found me, in the form of the man I never thought I'd be lucky enough to have. We met, we sized each other up, we dated, then slowly, surely, I fell face-first into love with him. I fought my insecurity, my fear, my baggage, my doubt, and learned to embrace happiness and joy, loving and being loved. You witnessed the whole thing on your computer screen.

I grew weary of my job. The position I held for four years had become too monotonous and had made me too poor to continue working there, but it was still a huge part of my life, and I was reticent to go. I toiled over my choice to leave, endlessly weighing options that clearly led to the conclusion that leaving was the right decision to make. I ended one long chapter of my life and began a new one. You read it all.

I was lonely, I was surrounded by friends. I was tortured and I did some torturing of my own. I cried and laughed, sometimes at the same time. I evolved. I moved. Twice. I learned how to take care of myself, instead of depending on someone else to do it for me. I went to a wedding by myself. I made new friends, in other people and in myself. I found love and a best friend in one person.

I started this year buried in tears and expectations and worry. I'm ending it feeling the happiest I've ever been. And you've been here every step of the way.

Thank you for sharing in what has proven to be the most difficult, most satisfying, best year of my life so far.

Happy New Year.