regarding introductions

chaim potok once said, "all beginnings are hard."  sometimes i wonder what was on his mind when he said that.

he could have been thinking about drake's freshman album or the gangly boy starting high school this week.  part of me wants to think he was shouting out the visionaries or the first person that started writing entirely in lowercase letters, but it might have just been a reference to the development of flappy bird.

maybe he was thinking about the 90s and what cristiano ronaldo looked like before the money and justin timberlake's ramen hair.  he could've been paying homage to the girl who will smoke her first cigarette today and the woman who is going out for the first time since the breakup and the single parent trying to start anew. 

it could be that he was referencing the struggling writer putting it on the page.  lifting the pen again and again, despite the fact that the marks he is making in no way convey the full weight of the feelings in his heart.  for all i know, he could be talking about the brainstorming that went into finding the name uranus. (nearly 100 years went into naming that planet.  i guess beginnings aren't the only things we struggle with here.) 

in reality, it could be any number of things.  we'll probably never know for sure.

but i think he was talking about me.  because never before have i met an individual so simultaneously desperately needing to and entirely terrified to begin again.  and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and agai

let's start over.

my name is anela.

i might be the grumpiest person i know.  i'm a happy human with the tendencies of a curmudgeon and i'll probably only live to be 36 because when you're 18 and don't know what you're doing, every day feels like a midlife crisis.  i admire honesty above almost everything which is rich because i do everything i can to avoid telling the truth--a quality that doesn't just apply to my interactions with other people.  i am vibrant and violent and terrified and invigorated and passionate and lazy and hopeful and doubtful and lame and wonderful and confused and i am both happy and sad and i'm still trying to figure out how that could be. (hi stephen chbosky.)  i don't know what i'm doing and i'm not sure i have anything to offer anyone and i hate talking about myself and i am a filthy liar. 

but i am alive.  i am living.  and i'm here to tell you just how those events are unfolding.  i'm doing this because there's a part of me that needs to be heard.

maybe somewhere along the way, i'll also turn into something worth listening to.

n