taking stock

I've been doing a lot of that lately - taking stock of my life, trying to figure out where I'm going, what I'm doing, etc. etc... sometimes I'm confident in these things, and other days I'm not.

These past few days have been an eye-opening experience for me; I've made some realizations on certain areas of my life, and have had a great conversation that was the most honest and open I've had with anyone in a while.

After seeing my friends and family this past weekend, I realized that it's not so much that I miss the people (I DO miss them all, a lot), but it's that I felt like I was missing their love. I don't need to be there with them to feel it - I just need to have faith in it and believe it. Seeing them all helped solidify that, because over the weeks I've received many messages from various people telling me they loved and missed me, but seeing them showed it to me so much, and I am eternally grateful that God has put them all in my life. Other things that have happened in the past week have shown me other issues I've been ignoring. One being this feeling of loneliness, this feeling of a void in my heart. I really stopped to think on it this week, and it's not really there, it's just me hiding behind the fear of getting to know people here. I have people here who COULD be my friends, but I've spent much time shutting them all out and keeping myself at a distance and for no real reason other than fear.

I feel like I made the choice to move back to PA at the end of my lease out of this fear; running away to what's secure so I don't have to face my fears - and that's exactly why I moved in the first place. I was tired of living a life that was "comfortable". Then I came here and let myself fall under the pressure of my fears - loneliness being the biggest. All this time, I've been hiding behind my insecurities, and praying to God to show me where to go. Every time, He's put people in front of me, and I've ignored it, like that couldn't be the answer...and it was. He's been showing me I need to open myself up, I need to learn to live. Life is too short, and to allow the evil in the world to bring me down is just allowing me to give up on my faith, to give up in what makes me ME. And I refuse to give up. So for now, I'm sticking it out, and really going to put an effort to see where life leads me here, because I haven't really given it a fair chance yet, and I need to.