A long time ago there was a girl with big dreams

& it was me. While most girls dream of their prom dates, their first kiss, I was dreaming of something else. Making promises on my birthday, saying that this year I will do this or this, that counted far more than any new year resolution.

& I promise myself to make all my dreams come true. Girls my age were more into thinking about what they were going to do for summer break or who would be their next high school love, and I was dreaming of being a writer, of being a librarian, of living in cities I read about. & this afternoon I remembered how I wasn't going to stay still. How I wasn't going to be my cousins and live forever and a day with their parents and grow old and bitter underneath the fact that they never found their one true love to settle down with & have kids with or the realization that they never found their passion.

I remember how I used to have a list of places I wanted to live in my old livejournal account. Places I've been to, lived in through the pages of books I read. Cities so alive, with people and mannerisms that just breathe curiousity and made me wish so bad that I was 10 years older, age 25, and a woman with a self supporting job that needs no man to be desire financially or anyone, and had the choice to live anywhere I wanted to.

One of those cities was Sacramento. The Camellia Capital of the world with its festivals. Another was Half-Moon Bay, just outside of San Francisco. Coronado Island, San Diego, which I love so much that I based a tiny bit of my book in. Not just california cities either. The Sno-Isles, Washington. Boston. Barrington, Rhode Island. Savannah. New Orleans, New York. Vero beach, Florida. Every region I wanted to explore, including the south (YES MIKKO THE SOUTH & YOU KNOW THIS! & I DON"T CARE IF I HAVE TO BRIBE THE HELL OUT OF YOU TO COME VISIT ME. You are going to visit me WHEREVER I END UP. Please? xD) just so many places, the allure of how it was presented to me in books, just called to me and it would be a way to get to know the US in it's beauty and ugliness. & this wasn't limited to the US. I wanted to travel the world, to really be a traveler, not just a tourist, most of the time when I pictured myself living overseas I saw West Europe in its enchanting siren song it called to make me feel uneducated. & now I know I can actually do it. I feel like everyday I wake up more. I become more aware of the person I used to be, & how I used to think to hell with everybody who would try to stop it. & to hell with love, I was much too busy to even think of kisses and hand holding and then guess what, someone fell in love with me. & I experienced it and I lost it, and it hurt me. It changed who I was. & I found it was wonderful, & it leaves me wondering whether that's it. Whether my ex would be the love story of my life, and I would be forever the woman telling of how her greatest love happened when she was too young to realized it, and it ended tragically cliche. & sometimes I still reel from that. Like last night, it just hurt, and it was my own fault because of the certain scene I was writing in the book, and how sometimes, writing, and listening to songs, and even reading or certain conversations had those echoes and I know it's time to move the fuck on, just get over him, and for the most part I am, it's just sometimes I am reminded & now that I'm remembering who I am, this curious little girl who wanted to know everything, read everything, get to know what the world had out there, and how I was going to conquer it, I realized that in my endeavor with love and relationships, just how much I lost of myself in that relationship & I promise, when I do get in a relationship & I know I will because I am going to want to date eventually, I will not forget myself. Not forget my dreams. Not going to sacrifice myself again in hopes of retaining another person. I don't need to sacrifice who I am for another person, they should like me, and not required myself to mold so much into their life that I forget what is my passion. & I promise myself, even before I became that person, that I would NEVER changed myself for a guy. Never say never, I became exactly the type of woman that I always wonder why the hell were they so stupid, so blind to themselves and let their boyfriends treat them however. Well I know why now, it was for love & at the time I would say it was worth it. I knew love, and now I know love lost, & I try to live with the knowledge of it that experiencing that does make me a better person and I make promises, so many promises, not to be that woman, not again. To be the best person I can be and live to the fullest reality of my dreams.