Turning 21.

I sat there, on my bed, three hours before midnight, looking through old pictures and recollecting old faces and old feelings. For a moment, I was filled with many emotions. I thought about past friendships and present, about betrayal, love, losing, learning, trust and especially forgiving. And in that moment, as I was trying to hold back the clash between the good emotions and the bad, a picture of you and I fell off the side table and onto the ground.

Perhaps it was because we have not been on such good terms lately, or perhaps because recollecting the past made me realize how much I had left behind. My un-contentness was not because you came along and took me away, yet the deception of it all, was when you took me away, you gave me realization of what was most precious to me. Here I am, with a whole new world at the palm of my hands, and in the moment of learning to forgive, I think I forgot about you. The one fresh breathe of air, the one that gathers my laughter, the one that watches me day and night, the one that reminds me to pray every night, the one that feeds me strength, and the one person, next to god, that always has the heart to forgive me.

I have learned to find peace where love lives, and next door to love, the happiness you find within love somehow will bring along contentness. One year from yesterday, I left everything and everyone behind. So here I am, trying to rekindle flames and blow out those close to dying. An hour and a half before I turn 21 – I will make new friends, love the ones I already have more, strive for new goals and work harder. I will not take the least of what I can get, but strive above all to even be able to love those who hurt me the most. I am slowly learning to see that money cannot buy love, and when you truly love someone, you are willing to give your whole life to them, trusting that they will never hurt you. I apologize a thousand times, to those I have hurt along the way, and pray that one day, true forgiveness will find its way out of them as well.

I am not quite ready, but I am looking forward for what the next year will bring. It has been extremely hard to surpass the last few years, but I trust the lord will somehow guide me back into the light. And as the most crucial moments of my life will someday slip way, I will only become stronger. And when I have achieved enough to live, I will show the world that when you let the lord be your Savior, nothing will ever be too painful to heal.