Ah-Cha-Cha.

Okay, seriously.  What happened to my blog.  It's been 10 years since I posted.  Okay, not really.  But several months and that is ridiculous.

So, a lot has happened since August.  In a nutshell: My sister and her family moved to San Fransisco, part of my heart died.  They just came for a visit, my heart sang.  I'm still dating Matt - yay! We moved into my sister's house and are renting it for a year!  We put new, laminate hardwood floors in - it looks wonderful.  I pulled off a surprise party for my Mom's birthday, I hosted Easter dinner, interviewed for the Sheriff's Department, went on a family vacation, learned to crochet, painted my first painting as an adult, started a craft business with my Mom and got a few new tattoos.  You know, the usual stuff.  :)

Life is good.  I plan to dive further into my creative realm - paint, crochet, make wreaths and jewelry, and write a book.  Yes, a book - an entire book.  Oh, and get a few more tattoos.

Life Jacket.

I, without a doubt, am having the best time of my life. I do not know that I can pin point the cause exactly. I think it is a culmination of so many different things.

Since my return to Columbus, I have rekindled one of the best friendships I have ever had and without a doubt, I will ever have in my life. She is the kind of person that makes you feel at home wherever you are. She is comforting, wise and caring. She has a wonderful heart and despite everything she has been through she maintains her sense of self and nurturing nature. I look at her and think, "If I can be half as wonderful as she is, I would be perfectly happy." That is how dear she is to me. Needless to say, she is an incredible woman and I am thrilled she is back in my life.

In the past two months I have met and spent time with the most wonderful guy, ever. [Yeah, he's that great.] He is uber intelligent, hilarious, caring, a gentleman, passionate about life, he can sing his heart out, he loves my friends [and they love him] and we have very similar life goals. We are different enough that it keeps things interesting but I feel like we want the same things out of life. I simply cannot get enough of him. It is an amazing feeling knowing I have found someone that makes me feel so free. I have waited a long time for someone like him. I am so thankful he has entered my life.

I am positively happy right now. And I have been for months. I cannot wait to regain my independence in this world but I don't feel as though I have ever stopped living.

Damaged.

NOTE: I wrote this on February 27, 2008. I thought it should be added here.

There comes a time in one's life when we look inward for answers instead of expecting the world to hand them to us. No one can tell me why I feel the way I do, why I think the way I do, only I can do that.

Failing is one of my biggest fears, failing as a mother ranking at the top with never finding love at a close second. (These are personal fears, that directly involve me, not others.)

I have lived a lot in 22 short years and I hope I still have a lot of life to live, experiences to gain, people to meet, places to see, and goals to exceed. I know what I want out of life and I work for it, I strive for it, I never let it out of my sight. I was raised a fighter, in every sense of the word. I've never known how to give up, it seems as though that phrase was never taught to me. This can present certain issues in life.

I am not sure how long I have felt this way although I do know it has been a while. I feel as though I am damaged. Many people I have crossed paths with in this life have hurt me with such careless abandon that it has left me with my heart in pieces. Somehow I've always picked myself up, gathered what was left of my heart, my mind and my sanity and marched forward. Life goes on and remember, I don't give up.

As the last few months have passed I think about all the heartache I have endured which leads me to my next thought, that person who is "lucky" enough to be involved with me, has their work cut out for them. I feel like I am robbing them of something and then on the other hand I know I deserve to be happy, to be loved and to be respected. In my head I know that I should not settle, I should expect someone to treat me like there is no one in the world they would rather be with, like I'm the one and that I should be treated that way because that is how they genuinely feel for me. My heart on the other hand feels sorry for them, all because some stupid guys took something innocent, caring and beautiful and tried their best to destroy it.

How many times do I have to scrap myself off of the filthy ground before someone will realize that I am worth it? I suppose when I meet that person he will think I'm worth fighting for, worth working through the sludge in order to be with me. I do not want to be rescued. I do not want to be pitied. They can keep that. I have gotten this far in life and God willing I will continue to make it through life. However, it pains me to know that someone will have to deal with my skepticism and my trust issues in order to be with me. I try, really try not to blame the next person for what has happened in the past. They are not the ones responsible. But that does not change the fact that I am broken, that I am slowly mending.

With pain comes growth and while these things I speak of are excruciating and mind numbing at times I love the woman I am today. These experiences have helped shape my person. I am still kind and caring, I will do anything for those I love, I would give my life for them without a moment's hesitation and that's real. I am still fun and outgoing. I am still sassy and yes, my temper is still quite in tact. I am still that person I was back in the days of my innocence. But I'm different too. I come with a lot more scars, mending abrasions and fresh wounds.

I feel like damaged goods. Something that was good and is now damaged. Something that is still good but regardless still has that damage. I have so much love to give and I know that given the chance I could be the best anyone has ever seen. I am not perfect and I am not the best looking but I could truly give someone the world. My world, our world.

I don't want to be perfect, my imperfections make me who I am and I want someone to love me not in spite of them but because of them. I want someone to love my quirks, my odd made up words and everything that makes me, Heather.

I may be damaged but who comes through this life completely unscathed? I may be damaged but I'm still good. Or maybe I am still good because I am damaged. Yes, I am more reluctant to give my heart away but all of these experiences have taught me something about life, about love, about people. I do not understand it all and I do not pretend to but I have been through these trials for a reason. Perhaps my destiny lies in helping that one person out there who feels helpless, who needs someone who can understand, maybe that person is one I am suppose to help, in whatever way, big or small. If I have been through all of this pain in order to help that person, even if it is a stranger, then it's been worth while, it's given purpose to my pain and I would know that I have helped someone get through something in their life that maybe only I could get them through at that moment in time.

Maybe when I am a detective and I encounter that victim and I tell her/him, "I know how you feel." That's real. Because I have been through it and the most important part is I'm through it, I'm a survivor. My journey will never be over but it has been 5 years and I am still here.

I will always give my heart, I can't help it. I am a lover and I want to give someone my all. No matter how many times my heart gets broken I will sweep up the pieces and put it back together. I may have a few missing pieces but for the most part it will be whole and maybe one day I will meet that person who can help me search for any lost parts.

Sabbatical

I feel like I took a sabbatical from life. No. Seriously.

I up and left my life as I had come to know it. I had spent almost 14 months in another state, in a relationship, with a new career. I left.

The area did not make me happy as I once thought it had or would. My [almost one year relationship] crumbled before my eyes and in a similar fashion as to my previous marriage. Disaster. My new career left much to be desired. [And questions to be answered.]

I needed to do some soul searching. Who was I and where was I going. Did I want the same things that I had wanted before. Did this experience change me forever.

I knew the answer to the last statement. I was changed forever. I will always be the person I was when I left for my new adventure but I will also always be different. I will never again be that same exact person I was before. Sounds like a contradiction, I know.

There are only a few things I know for sure:

I know who I am and I am happy with that person. [I am still learning and growing but in a direction that I am happy with.]

I cannot imagine myself being anything but a police officer. [Even if it consumes me.]

It Will Never Happen

It is amazing how blind we can be, how much we choose to ignore and not to see, all because we think it will just go away.

The hopes and dreams we are afraid to lose, that we so desperately want to cling to. But that false hope always fades and that is always when we feel the most alone. Perhaps it is becasue you feel foolish or because it is yet again, another failure. For me it is the dreams that I know are fading. The cabin stays in the mountains that will never happen, the children that we will never bring into this world together and the evenings on the porch swing we will never get to see as we grow old together. It is the history that will never happen.

I don't know why I let these people bother me. Whether it is in my professional or personal life people are always getting to me. I don't know what to do. The advice given to me makes sense, do my job, be pleasant enough and no one can do anything say or do anything. But I am at a loss. I guess it would be different if I was happy with my job in general but I am not. It is a stressful, gruesome job and instead of embracing one another and supporting one another, my co-workers resort to back stabbing and making fun of one another. I hate it.

But Why?

Why do people have to die? I wish they didn't. I have never lost someone extremely close to me and of course the idea scares me but because I have never had to endure such a loss, in turn I have never had to fully grasp it.

I was thrown into death and dealing with it recently by taking a forensic position that I thought I was completely ready for. It turns out I am just as emotional as I thought, if not more. My mind tends to analyze and over analyze events especially life changing ones. It is not that I do not feel that I am uncapable of doing this job, I know I have the knowledge, I'm working on getting more experience and my reasoning for doing this job is as strong as ever. Do I believe I can do this job forever? Hell no. I do however believe that this job experience will only make me a better police officer but my drive to be a police officer is not just alive, it's thriving more than it ever has.

When I decided that I wanted to be a police officer I felt as though it wasn't even a decision, it was something that I was called to do, born to do. I always said two things. One, I promised my mother I would never let the job change me and in turn I made a promise to myself that I would quit if I thought that the job was jeopardizing who I was and my happiness. Two, I said that if I could choose how to die I wanted to die in the line of duty, protecting someone, an innocent person. I still see the heroic "appeal" but I do not know that I would call it "appeal" anymore. My new thinking is why would I was to die violently, by some punk and put my family through all of the suffering of knowing that some jerk face killed me? No, I want to save all the innocent people I can and live through it with them.

To be continued ...