06/26/00 - 07:53 AM

I have to say thank you for all the wonderful feedback I have been getting. I am shocked at the amount of responses I have gotten. I am deliriously happy about it. Thanks to all who have taken the time to email me or sign my guestbook. I appreciate it.

I suppose I should take the time to explain myself in a bit more detail. I have yet to really reveal any information about myself. I am 21 for those who care. I feel 35. My life experiences have added wrinkles to my soul, if not to my face. I appear to be about 17/18, which I suppose, when I am older, will be a much more appreciated assest. I suppose I will be grateful for a youthful appearance, but right now it is more of a curse. Being carded for movies gets very old.

I am a college student, although I have decided to take a semester off to finish writing a novel that I began. So far this effort has been purely futile. My novel grows more hideous to me by the day. And between working and living, I feel very little motivation to scrawl down more of the story.

My major in college has absolutely nothing to do with writing. Which is part of the reason why I felt I needed to take some time off and study myself. Over the past year I have had to relearn my personality and myself. I have switched faces and facades so much that even I can not keep up. But now I am getting to the root of me, and I like what I see.

I am beginning to re-grow a solid confidence in myself that I lost when Andrew and I broke up. The lessons that I have learned over my 21 years of life have been hard to accept, but I have really had little choice in the matter.

In the past I have been a young woman that was romantic, loving and controlled by her emotions. In the future I will be a young woman who is still romantic, loving, but her emotions are under her own control. Right now I am in transition between the two. My growth has produced a deeply rooted maturity in me. I realize that my actions before have just been poor efforts to be the person that I am slowly metamorphosing into. This phase is wonderful. But it has also caused me to completely withdraw from the people that care the most about me.

I am wary of the world, although I love life. I watch people and see their mistakes. Their fear to be honest, their pride controlling their happiness. It makes me sad. People need to rejoice in their love, not be ashamed. Shame and love have no place together in life.

The preface to my transition had been slow and painful. I have bleed gallons of my essence, and let so many suck the energy from my soul. But my lessons have been learned nevertheless. At 21 I consider myself to be gaining an abundance of wisdom decades early. I am thankful for its early arrival.

I am beginning to love myself. For the person I was, however weak, for the person I will be, however cold, for the person I am, however confused. I am simple and plain, I am just me. But it�s nice to be able to learn who exactly me is.