Fantastic Feeling

Internetland, I am feeling oddly. By that, I mean I have an odd feeling, not that my sense of touch is off. An odd tingling in my earlobes, and in the tip of my nose, and in my littlest fingers and in all of my toes.

I am uncertain, friends, for I rarely feel this way. But. I think. It just might be.

Glee. Stemming from a sense of belonging. And.. oh, maybe it's just happiness. I am unsure.

I'm incredibly terrified about what this last term at university will bring, but I'm looking forward to it. I feel like I now have a support system in place: an attentive partner, a few professor mentors to look up to and who are helping me as much as they can, a family that is giving and taking while letting me grow, and some really amazing friends - through my knitting group, and Twitter, and at the radio station.

I will not be cliche and say that things are falling into place. Because they are not. It is not gravity or nature or fate or luck. It is hard fucking work. I am working to help myself get healthier, and to keep people in my life who make me feel worthy of this odd gleeful feeling.

Helping myself and choosing to be social are both very difficult, sometimes even painful, challenges that I must work at. There have been times.. years, even.. when I was either unable to do that or I was just too afraid that I'd be unable to do that, so I didn't try. And sure, I've chosen to stay in various kinds of relationships that didn't help me. I told myself that I was being selfless in those situations, that I was making other people happy while my own happiness was not a factor. I didn't believe I was martyr - quite the opposite - for although I wasn't really present in these relationships, I wasn't sacrificing my own happiness since I didn't believe that I could be happy, or that I deserved to be happy. I've learned that I can do more, and that I am worth more, than existing solely to fill other people's needs. Also, that people are remarkable: they can adapt and grow too. They don't need me to be sick. Well.. most of them don't need me to be sick. And the ones that do.. I'm still learning to face that.

I still have a lot of work to do.

I will always have work to do on this. On me. But.. I'm beginning to think that I just might be worth it.

And for those thousands of times each day when I doubt that and I doubt myself, I have you, e-friends, to remind me that people are remarkable. Sometimes they offer you a letterpress case because people are surprising and generous and worth getting to know. But.. that's another blog post.