I have neglected my blog for years, trying to sort through . . .a lot of things. I’ve tried posting baking videos on YouTube, then got too self-conscious to be on camera and stopped that. I set up a Patreon to share my writing, since I am an aspiring author. It isn’t here because for the moment I don’t feel comfortable putting my fiction writing out there anywhere that isn’t behind a paywall, and thus visible to a much smaller and more select audience.

But here, on this long-neglected blog, I’m going to try and keep myself accountable as I start on a new journey. A quest to find the woman I sometimes glimpse in the mirror before I actually look at myself, the woman that I feel stirring deep down on my best days.

I currently weigh 230 pounds. I despise the woman I see in the mirror when I let myself look too long, especially a full-length mirror. The woman in that reflection disgusts me. She did this to herself – I did this to myself. Long ago when I was young, I put on a coward’s armor rather than fighting and raging like I should have, like I knew even then that I could have. I’ve worn this armor ever since, letting it build up, letting it get worse. I’ve always known how to take it off, I’ve even managed it once, mostly, without even trying. But then I let it all come back because I was depressed. Because I hated myself enough that I didn’t care. I didn’t think I was worth the effort.

I read a book, a series of books actually – The ACOTAR series by Sarah J. Maas – that offered me something that no self-help or self-improvement book I’ve read ever has. I read A Court of Thorns and Roses and A Court of Mist and Fury and saw in Feyre the same horror at her life that I sometimes feel, a life of safety and protection and drowning. I read A Court of Frost and Starlight and A Court of Silver Flames and saw much more of myself in Nesta that I even knew I had inside there, deep in my shadows. Where she turned to drinking and sex, I turned to food and sloth. She helped me see what it was that I hate so much when I look too long at myself. And she showed me that I can get past the things that have damaged me, the things that make me despise myself. I can become the woman I want to be.

It will be no uplifting fantasy story for me – I have no Cassian to support and guide my training, no Gwyn or Emerie to train beside me, all of us believing in each other and pushing each other to believe in ourselves enough to put in the work. It’s just me, and the only great triumph in the end will be looking at that woman in the mirror and, finally, being proud of her. Finally loving what I see when I see myself.

But I’m not entirely alone, even if I’m looking through a one-way mirror. There are others out there, supporting me even if they don’t know it. There’s Tank Tolman, who videos are always supportive, always kind. There’s Stuart Mackey, who has his own shadows behind his eyes, but keeps fighting, keeps trying, and somehow manages to encourage and lift up others through and in spite of his own trials. They have no idea that I exist, but I see them, and they do help me.

For the foreseeable future, this blog will shift its focus to this journey I’m beginning. A way to keep myself accountable and help myself succeed, and perhaps, if someone else is standing where I stand now and finds this, I might be able to help them too.