24.
So that’s ten.
Two hands.
Ten years.
Such a long time.
Had you asked me then where I thought I’d be in ten years, it sure as fuck wouldn’t be here. 
Here is not bad – it’s just not what I thought.
Some parts are better than I could’ve dreamed. Others are definitively worse. So many are just different.
Ten is hard to wrap my head around.
It feels like yesterday, it feels like a long-ago dream nightmare dream.
I’ve learned some things, forgotten others.

Everything has changed.
I’m a new person.
Nothing has changed.
I’m still me, we are still we.
Somehow both stronger and weaker.
This life is one I cannot recognize or reconcile.

I’d like to revisit some things and OH MY GOD I’d love to delete some things.
I’d like to forget and not feel every damn thing, but that’s not how I’m made.
I remember… Every slight, every misstep, every lie, every hurt, every word.
I remember the good things too, which is a curse in itself sometimes.
(Woe is me, right?)

Ten years.
A lifetime. A fraction of a second.
Good riddance. Don’t go.
In the same breath.
Time is a thief and also Santa, taking away everything and giving even more.
What about the next ten years?!
Where will I be?
I won’t even think it because years seem too big today.
But the next ten minutes?!
They’ll be great.

xoxoXXX

~ shygirl