Lesson 1

My identity. I can’t yet truthfully say. Could I rattle off a list of facts? Of course. By some measure is that the correct answer to who someone is? Possibly. Yet the longer I spend around people, the more I learn by what they don’t say. What actions they don’t take. Ready for a cliche? When someone shows you who they are, believe them. A lesson I learned by repeated examples that almost broke me. Me. I love animals. Nothing is more honest in this world. Nature. Tall trees. Mountains with edges so threatening that they tantalize my intrusive thoughts to leap. Art. Music. Kendrick Lamar, a ghost I’ve never met yet have heard the voice of through my best and most devastating moments. I could list my diagnosis, but just know that mental health is my largest obstacle. Some people tell me I am funny. I just know how to exploit my trauma for kicks. Traumedy. Netflix special coming soon.

Overall I am just another individual trying to avoid the land mines as I walk/run/crawl/drag myself through this life. What brought me to charge my card for a domain name and website was a feeling that somehow, everything I have been through is fuel for a fire that can bring warmth to others. Light the way. Or burn down my world. I’m not sure which it is yet. But I think it is time I tried to find out.

So, if somehow you found this page, clicked on this blog post, and landed on this very sentence, I’m glad you did. I spend much of my life feeling like an alien, watching people interact and socialize and have more than 1 friend and climb invisible ladders of success that must all be an illusion but it is hard to remind yourself that others may perceive you to be that social butterfly. That effervescent glow that lights up a room, that girl who seems to know exactly who she is, what she wants, and where she is going.

I think we are all lost, truly. Some may hide it better than others.

But that’s why this is not the mathematics of growing up. It is an art. And art can get messy as fuck.

- Gina