Fast Forward To Now.

Let me catch you up to speed...

I want to say everything I ever shared here was all bullshit, but that's not true. It was who I was at the time, and in retrospect, I was pretty shallow and narrow-minded.

God is still a constant, if you were wondering.. but I'm a different person now, that's for sure.

I skipped work today. Stumbled across my old blog, and realized a lot of the hurts are still hurting, but I'm not as naive.

My last entry I shared I was starting university on the opposite coast of where I grew up. It was a year filled with pottery and sister drama. (You see, my sister was an upperclassman at the same campus and she had a boat load of relationship issues with her on and off again fiance at the time.) It was a co-ed wet campus too. I had to do a lot of thinking about my own core values and figure out what was important to my personal boundaries. I didn't really party, but I made friends with all kinds of people I wouldn't have if I wasn't in such a place. After being there for a year, I missed the support system of my hometown so I decided to transfer back to a local community college and continued in fine arts. Social working is definitely not a thing in my life anymore, haha.

So for a while afterward, my life was pretty stable, I was living at my parent's while attending classes at the local community college and got involved with a church's college-aged program. About a year and a half into college, I decided I was tired of being broke and wanted to work. My "do everything now" impulse put me in a position where I was working full time over night stocking shelves, part time twice a week babysitting, and full time college classes. That petered out quickly afterward, unexpectedly too. I was planning to put school on pause and was laid off.

While making church a priority, (in hindsight, it was to avoid loneliness, and I filled the hole with a lifestyle) I started searching for another job. I was offered a caregiver position and training and I did that until I failed my certification class. I'm still kinda bitter about the test proctor's actions, but I don't really care, I was burned out on being a caregiver after about 9 months. At this point I had moved out of my parents and into a fully furnished studio basement apartment and aged out of the college-program at church. My attendance and involvement stuttered to a halt. I realized the lifestyle I was living was just a facade and that I didn't really have any substantial relationships or friendships.

Searching online for something to keep me preoccupied, I stumbled upon a bdsm (bondage discipline sado-masochism) community forum.

I started working at Hastings. I had travel plans to Canada and was fired the day before I left.

Canada was eye opening. It challenged me. I put myself in stupid situations and realized quickly that I know how to survive. I experimented with some hallucinogens and learned quickly what I was and was not comfortable with. I made some temporary friends, and met an online friend in person who didn't stay friends for much longer afterward.

I quickly moved out of the studio apartment and didn't want to return to my parents, became homeless and crashed with a friend I had made from the bdsm forum for a couple months. I got more involved in the local underground fetish / kink community and made some friends, made some stupid choices, learned more about myself, and learned a few new hobbies.

Couch surfing for a few months took a toll on me and I wanted to work so I could have cash. Can't really do much without money these days. My parents were welcoming and allowed me to stay in the spare bedroom turned storage space. After three months, I finally got hired at a corporate company with a very nice pay. I'm still working for the same company and am coming up on my 3 year anniversary. (I'm pretty proud of this one.)

After a couple years of stumbling through friendships and friends with benefits and learning how to communicate with people, I started dating someone. We have a peculiar relationship. I think I'm more attached than I realize. I don't think I love him, I don't think he loves me, but we don't really want to let go of the other. It's kind of like building a bad habit and not really wanting to break that habit. I still feel like a trapped princess and he's just the bird that comes to visit every now and then, not the champion come to rescue. His company is nice, but I still struggle with the lack of romance and intimacy. That could just be part of my projecting assumptions, and skewed perspective though. He's a good friend and he's comfortable and I'm lonely.

I started going to a weekly group program provided by church about a year ago when I realized I was spiritually isolated. There's not a lot of people within the sex community that believe in Jesus. I'm not the type to proselytize, I'm a hypocrite. So I choose to not judge other people's choices in life because I am not making "godly" choices. I would say my life now hardly reflects a "christian-lifestyle" that I had imagined I would have. Slowly making strides towards reconnecting with others on a spiritual level helped with anxieties that had cropped up from spiritual isolation and gave me comfort remembering we have a loving God who continues to pursue us all throughout our lives.

So today... I'm sitting in my robe on my little sofa, in my one bedroom apartment skipping work because "mental-health-day" and am about to marathon a series on netflix. Hm.. I might go out to the bar tonight.. that is if I have motivation enough to shower. Anyway... I'll be adding quite a few writings I did over the past couple years that are posted on my page (from bdsm website). Most of them are profanity ridden, some very sexually graphic, but all are from me.

I'm glad to have found my blogspot so I can start spewing randomness again.

Cheers.