It's Been A While...

I started this blog a little over a year ago...It has been a while since I last created a post.

I started to think about all that has happened in one year. I'm overwhelmed. This time last year I had just moved into a huge house in Portland with Bill (& Wade & Riley, of course). I was getting ready to turn 24. I was without "my bowling alley", it had closed down leaving me on unemployment and working under-the-table for a local vendor, listing items on eBay. The bowling alley closing had left me more than laid-off, it had left me ungrounded and mildly depressed.

I had lost more than the bowling alley (as if that wasn't enough). I had lost Heather. Heather, the only true friend I had made in Portland. I had other friends but I consider her the only "true" friend because she didn't work with me at the bowling alley. Yes, she had been introduced to me through Adam, who did work at the bowling alley with me, but she didn't work there. She was a great outside view. She loved the bowling alley almost as much as I did or more in a certain way. She didn't have to spend anytime there, but she chose to.

I lost Heather. And my heart was broken into a million pieces. My heart hadn't been broken that way since High School and I honestly didn't think I was capable of that kind of loss at that point in my life. I survived, of course, as I've always done. I didn't understand the loss and along with my bowling alley being "gone", as I liked to say, I felt completely isolated.

I had lost Jason. I had only begun to really find Jason...and almost instantly I realized I had made so many mistakes with him. At the point of that epiffany, he was long gone.

I had lost my day-to-day contact with Troy, but Troy had lost a lot too. Troy had lost 12 years of his youth to that bowling alley that had taken my youth as well, just in a smaller portion. Troy still loves me and I love Troy endlessly. So he is not completely lost to me, but I wish things had turned out differently sometimes.

This past year was the first year I began to understand regret. The feeling is something that I have never quite grasped. The concept, yes, but never the feeling behind it. Joe loved that about me. When I was with him, in High School (and beyond), I knew I had made mistakes. Those mistakes never seemed to define me the way others (namely Joe) let them.

I became much better friends in the past year with an old family friend, Matt. He has been my knight-in-shining-armor numerous times. A knight is something that is hard for this longing princess to admit she desires. He has been a true diplomat, as he always was, at explaining to me all the things that are not easy, but instead necessary to hear. And doing so in the most loving and kind way. He is more kind then I will ever be.

Benjamin began dating Brenna. Which I am not fully ready to comment on, but has left me feeling somewhat alone and neglected. This feeling has been rising in me since the bowling alley closed it's doors, but Ben always seems to be the one to put the nail in the coffin. I know that Ben loves me. I know that his love is something as permenant as the love I feel for him. But it doesn't make me any less lonely.

I know there are so many people that I should become friends with. There are so many things at work and at home I should try to improve. I believe that my co-workers genuinely like me. Which is very nice. They don't expect me to kiss their ass, which is a good thing, because it isn't my strong suit. They are blown-away by my candidness with them and my tackfulness with our counter-parts.

Work has been going really well lately. It has made me willing to accept my position. Not as a resignation to my love of the bowling alley life I created in Portland, but as new belief that I can truely do my job well and contribute to my co-workers and employer.

This year has not been a complete bummer. Of all these disappointments and heart-breaks learnings abound. That which doesn't kill me...Stronger I am today. Strong than yesterday or one year ago, which seems like a lifetime.

Stronger than I ever thought I would be.