Perhaps I'll start with a blank page..

Perhaps if I start with a blank page…..

Perhaps if I start with a blank page on the computer and allow my eyes to watch the cursor dance, my hands will begin to glide freely and unencumbered from thought across the keyboard. Allowing my hands to effortlessly bring forth words that capture my deepest thoughts and feelings—permitting me to finally do the work of writing without the arduous task of reliving the miraculous journey that has been the last five years of my life.

Perhaps I can avoid reliving the dark moments that now seem so far away. The times I lost myself and found myself just to lose myself again and discover parts of me that I never knew existed.

Perhaps I can tell a story that, if I'm honest, I understand in parts but not in its entirety. A story that I understand more and somehow less of as the years pass.

Perhaps I can make sense of being the happiest I've ever been while sometimes feeling the loneliest. Of having to reconcile the woman I have become with the woman I once was and how starting fresh sometimes means cutting away pieces of you that no longer belong.

Perhaps then I could find a way to tell this beautifully layered, awkward, heartwarming, and sometimes wrenching story of discovery, evolution, death, rebirth, and joy in a way that does it justice without minimizing my truth or misrepresenting someone else's.

Perhaps if I start with a blank page, I can explain that happily ever after is acceptance of your journey and not the accomplishment of reaching a destination. That the ebb and flow of life is what makes it rich and worth living.

Perhaps I'll start with a blank page and find the courage to tell the journey of the phoenix - one in which dancing through the fire always preceds the rise from ashes.