Belonging

I've pretty much always been the worst when it comes to journaling.  I have many a notebook filled with good intentions and a dozen scribbled pages dissolving into many blank ones.  This goes all the way back to my pre-teen years.  I want so badly to be one of those women with beautifully scrawled pages, full of thoughts, feelings, prayers, desires.  Every so often, I even believe that this will be the year I'll do better and I'll try again (there's one on my nightstand as I type).  This blog has really been no different.  The manners-loving part of me feels like I need to apologize for this, probably on monogrammed stationery.  The rest of me is indifferent, as it would appear that this is just kind of who I am.

Despite that, I haven't taken this blog down.  I still come by and read what's going on with other people I've loved and followed over the years.  I keep up with my darling internet friends on other forms of social media. I loved the little community blogging created, and I miss it.  Mostly, I miss writing regularly.  Admittedly, most of what I wrote here was unimportant, even to me.  They were the little moments that make up a life, and while sweet, they were fluff.  Every once in a while though, I'd manage to string some words together that really said something resonant, and those are the moments I miss the most.  

I spend a lot of time alone.  A lot.  Honestly, I don't mind it.  I like my little routines and after I've listened to the voices of teens for 7.5 hours on a school day, silence is golden.  But, I have missed sitting down and filling my little corner of the internet with my brand of weirdness.  I have missed the fine art of rambling until things made sense.  I'm still struggling to find places where I fit in, whether in a church community or life in general (you try being the 30-something single girl at social gatherings sometime).  There are big, honking chunks of my life from 10 or so years ago that I still miss daily, especially people.  In some instances, I think I have romanticized the those days as far as their moments go, but I don't think I've done that with the people.  I'm a hard person to win over, and there were people from my former church (which feels almost like a former life, at this point) that I truly loved who are no longer people I see and that's so difficult to face. And it's harder because I just haven't found the kind of fit that I had at that time in my life again. 

At dinner the other night, a friend and I were bemoaning the unique situations we are in socially.  It's hard to be a woman without a family of my own when most people my age have at least started on one.  There just isn't a lot of common ground. When the church you were raised in and the church you spent most of your 20's in are no longer a part of your life (one literally no longer exists), it's hard to know where you belong. 

I'm thankful that I belonged here, even if that has waned through my inability to find the time or find the words.  I'm thankful for the people I "met" and the thoughts and silliness shared in equal measure.  And while I doubt I will ever blog with the frequency I once did, I hope I can at least stop by with a thought or two a little more often, because we need as many places we belong as a we can get.  Even if they are ones you create for yourself.