THAT Girl

I can’t remember the last time I stopped to smell the roses. My current job keeps me so busy that most days I leave my house when it's still dark and I return home after the sun has set. People tell me all the time that I’ve “accomplished a lot for my age,” but sometimes I feel as though I’ve really accomplished nothing at all. Do you know the feeling? Sure, I’ve advanced in my career, received my college diploma and written the pre-requisite academic publication, but despite my success I still feel like I used to be so much more.

I used to be the girl that started petitions to “Save the Frogs!” just because it was the right thing to do, the girl who stayed up all night reading classic fantasy epics and Harry Potter fan-fiction all because she wanted to learn how to use a magic wand, the girl who fearlessly faced down bullies, and loved to wear orange trench-coats lined with pink pineapples just because it made people smile. I used to be THAT girl.  

In elementary school I wore red plastic coke-bottle glasses that were the nearly the size of my entire face (no joke). I got braces, put my hair in pig-tails whenever I felt like it, and wore high socks with my shirt tucked in. I was the girl who never cared what anyone thought, as long as she was following her heart, the one who always fought for the underdog and spent hours trying to debate people about moral ambiguity, love, and world peace just for the hell of it. Oh how I miss THAT girl.

These days, I feel accomplished when I wake up early enough to go to the gym for 20 minutes. I pat myself on the back when I remember to pack home lunch so I don’t have to bust out the subway coupons (yet again). If I manage to make the 2hr drive home without drifting off behind the wheel I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

I feel like my brain is dripping down the side of my face and pooling in a pathetic puddle on the pavement. Where did THAT girl go?

Since starting this blog and revitalizing my novel I have written more in the past 21 days than in the past few years. I thought it would be a burden of discipline, forcing me to set an alarm and a color-coded time slot on my calendar. But writing this novel is like breathing. It’s like finally getting a breath of fresh air after days without oxygen. I feel like a furled bud opening for the first taste of sunlight after a heavy rain. 

When I was THAT girl, I understood that anything is possible if you are willing to work hard enough, and my belief in myself was unshakeable. But I am no longer THAT girl.

Beloved, things have happened to you. Things that have shaken you from your very core and shattered your world in earthquake-like fashion. You have fought in epic battles, and you have been the heroes and heroines of your own novels. The victories have been great, but in some cases the costs have been greater.

The woman I am today is fighting herself. I see-saw between joyful gratitude that I have enough, that I can finally feed my family AND pay the mortgage, and bitter frustration that the world seems a lot smaller than it used to be.

But writing this long-awaited novel has reminded me that THAT girl, with her wide eyed innocence and her voracious appetite for life, love and the pursuit of happiness, she’s still inside of me. I tried to shut her and her unrealistic naiveté out of my head, but the floodgates of my heart have been reopened and she is once again infiltrating my spirit and encouraging me to stop and smell the roses. And boy do they smell good!