Well, I’ve been having pretty shitty luck for the past several months…since about the end of September I’d say, and the past few days were some of the worst, or so I thought. Looking at it now, I can see that they were the best things for me; because of this luck and yesterday, I decided to get in contact with an old friend.

Her name is Lindsey, and she’s a 19 year old girl, living in Morgantown. She has this strange thing about her you see, and it’s why I love her so much. She has a great life, and amazing friends. She has confidence, good looks, and is a good person to boot. She kind of holds herself on this pedestal where nothing can really bother her, nothing keeps her down. She loves getting up each morning, because she gets cooler every day. She hates going to sleep at night because she feels like she’s wasting time. She’s always busy and up to something. She’s your best friend or your worst enemy. She’s logical, and carries grudges, and is far from perfect. But she loves life and right then in my life I missed her.

I missed me.

I realized sitting in my dad’s car yesterday everything that I needed to realize. I hit…nirvana if I will, and instantly Lindsey was back as if she was never gone. I realized that I was depressed, and that I was letting myself be made miserable by other people, the same thing I was doing at the end of my senior year, and I remember how great it felt when I broke those chains of hypocrisy, deceit, lies, and jealousy and remembered what it was like to live. I was on cloud 9, nothing could bring me down. It was the time of my life. And I don’t remember when exactly it ended. When the chains I fought so hard to break then returned with a vengeance. The first time I sawed through them, this time….I chewed through them. It was hard work fixing myself mentally. But after I did; the feeling I got when I stood up and felt whole again, not empty was everything I’d ever wanted. I want to know when I became that shy girl that faked a smile and confidence that was always tired because she hated her life. It wasn’t me. I didn’t want it to be me. When did my sunny skies become filled with rain clouds? When did the mirror I cleaned months ago become dirty and cracked? I don’t know. I want to be…no…I AM the old me again. The emo jean wearing, tight tank top loving girl with dark eye makeup and a goofy crooked smile. The girl whose hair changes more than the weather that has more ideas tumbling through her head than she knows what to do with. The old spontaneous me. I was so proud of myself before, and I don’t know when I lost my self-respect, but I’m not happy that I did. No, I think I do know when…but it’s a part of my life I’ve moved on from. I feel light, like I could just fly away now. Like happy thoughts really could make me fly. Maybe I can find Never neverland…or fall down Alice’s rabbit hole. I’m a Juliet who doesn’t need a Romeo, and I love my Peter Pan complex, and I realize that I really don’t know what I’m doing with my life right now, but that’s okay. That’s the beauty of it. I want to enjoy being 19, I want to enjoy learning from my mistakes, and even taking risks that may lead to mistakes.

I’ve proven myself to be more patient than I thought I could be. And I’ve proven myself to be stronger than I ever thought possible. I’m done with all the negative pessimistic things in my life. I talked to a friend last night, that I hadn’t talked to in several months….shortly into the conversation he made a comment about how optimistic my tone was, with just trying to reassure him of things in his love life. My newer friends all though I was on drugs, they’d never seen me this happy, this chipper before. I spoke to my best friend on the phone, and she told me how she just watched everything I was come crashing down and she knew why, and I knew why. But it wasn’t something she could just bring up, it would have caused problems…and so she felt helpless in just standing by…like watching a train wreck. Today, a friend who is unaware of recent events walked into my usual hangout. She sat down and I looked at her. I said “Sarah…the old Lindsey’s back. The one from the end of senior year.” She looked at me, and there was moment of silence and then “FINALLY!”. I never realized how obvious it was to everyone that all my happiness of recently had been faked. How much my friends missed the old me….how much I missed the old me.

Of course I didn’t do this alone, it has once again proven who is meaningful in life and who isn’t. I’ve learned who I want to surround myself with…the people who remain un-judgmental but try to make me laugh when I’m down. The ones that text me if I’ve had a bad day just to see if I’m okay. The ones that know when they see me that something is wrong. The ones that go out of their way to talk to me by any means they can like facebook and on here after all the tears and see how I’m doing, and giving me an amazing diary. A living diary made of themselves. And the ones that sit by my side and listen to me, and just stay with me when I’m crying in the middle of a lobby, the ones that think of things to do (like playing pool) just to get me out of an environment I don’t feel comfortable in, just to get me away and cheer me up. One of my friends is nicknamed Rainbow. And he said something that I’d like to quote here. Some that’s very VERY true. “…If you ever need to smile nothing chases off a rainy day like a rainbow. ” And it’s true. So this is for all my diaries.

Dear Diary,

Hello, my name is Lindsey. I’m 19 years old, and I’m ready to live.