Starting Over.

Dear Internet,

Hello, it's me again! Did you miss me? (Probably not, because only 8 people read this annually, but that's okay, it's good to see my favorite octet back again.)

I have a secret, internet, and that's that I'm terrible at meeting people. When I go to parties, I'm typically the girl in the corner who brought her own beer watching people flirt over their cranberry cocktails and stories of what happened last weekend to that one friend they both kind of know. I'm not good at these things. Typically, I just walk up to people I've never met and criticize (or, occasionally, compliment) what it is they're drinking and hope that it works. (At this point, it has about a 67% success rate).

So when, days before Thanksgiving, I met somebody new who didn't run the other way when I made a joke about "Legally Blonde," I got a little overexcited. Granted, we met through one of those dating apps that I criticize heavily (and have even trashed explicitly on this blog), but a few glasses of wine in and swiping right sounded like an outstanding idea. I figured this would be one of those things where we talked until I figured out that he only wanted me for sex, and our conversation would slowly fade into the abyss as they all seem to do.

I was wrong.

This got me to wondering...What does it mean to start over? What does it mean to sit on the couch drinking wine watching John Mulaney with someone you barely know and realize you never want to leave? What does it mean to forget the people who came before, to lose your mind, your breath, to lose track of where you are for just a second, and then slap yourself on the wrist because it's probably too soon for all of that? What does it mean that I'm terrified for the person I will not name to read this in fear that he'll decide that a blog post is just crossing the line a little too far?

Regardless of all of this fear, there's one brave thing I've learned: when you start over, you don't owe apologies to the people you're leaving behind. They don't need a condolence card for the fact that they're no longer in the forefront of your brain, and you don't need their permission to move on. You don't need to call them to tell them you're moving forward, that you gave their sweatshirt to your neighbor and took their pictures off your walls and deleted their sports preferences off of your phone. No, you don't owe them anything, because the only person that you owe anything to is yourself, and that's an apology.

So, here goes.

Dear Madison,

I'm sorry that I kept you up at night thinking that you weren't good enough, thinking about something that wasn't helping you become a better version of yourself. I'm sorry that I didn't focus on you, enough, and I promise that I'll do better for you in the future, because you deserve better.

Sometimes we meet people who are so amazing that they help us realize how amazing we are, help us realize how much we truly love ourselves. Today I woke up excited to be myself. Proud to be myself. Loving myself. It's not the people from my past that I have to thank for that. It's the people--the old friends and the fresh eyes (especially those)--that I have now. Today, I start over. Today, I move forward. Today, I put myself first. And I've never felt better.

Oh...And to the person that sparked this in me?

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

-mk.