Real

Blog Introspection Challenge

12.) How- if at all -has blogging changed your life?

 

It’s given me confidence, helped bring my creative side back out again, and given me the freedom to express the funny side of my personality through the image choices and captions that I use in my posts. we tend to get stuck in the labels that were given us in our childhood, and I was never the funny one. I was the contemplative one, the mediator, the do-the-right-thing girl. my mother was the cynical one, my brother the witty one, those roles were already taken so I only showed those aspects of my personality to a select few. my style leaned more towards teasing sarcasm but all my pop culture references tended to get lost on those around me.

crash & burn!

fast-forward to my early adult years when I was the first to have children in my circle of friends and extended family, which meant we generally did not share the same cultural references–like my crush on Steve from the children’s television program Blues Clues. 

I…don’t know what to do with that information.

The people I came into contact with everyday were generally older than me and so I felt like I needed to work my way up, skipping the wandering post college years and heading straight into upright responsibility, since I was already married and having children. it wasn’t until I hit a low point in my life and found a refuge in the lighthearted atmosphere of the Twilight fandom that I started to let myself be me, instead of what I thought everyone expected me to be. it was an ongoing process but by the time I came over to this fandom, the metamorphosis had already begun. 

more butterfly than evil incarnate, but no less pretty!

It’s scary to put yourself out there in blog posts, especially in the beginning, and definitely when you’re still a newbie in the fandom. something unexpected happened when I did: suddenly my playful nature became an asset instead of something to explain away. I had readers who shared my sense of humor and got most of my references. this gave me a certain kind of validation in my off-line life as well, to just be who I am and to like what I like. 

Dorks ‘R Us

I brought the humor out into my everyday interactions more, instead of just saving it for home, and found that it builds bridges in ways I never imagined it could. You did that for me. every time you laughed along with me. every time you encouraged my uniqueness. every time you acknowledged that I had a voice. you made me real. and it has changed my life for the better.

once you are real you can’t become unreal again.

it lasts for always.

 

❤