I’ve been running away from who I am since I discovered who that was.

I didn’t like an inch of the skin on my bones, didn’t respect a single thought that I produced.

For so long, I faked a confidence so well-crafted, I started to believe in it too.

But now, I have real confidence.

I smile when I look in mirrors, and I don’t let myself look too long anymore. I write and I post and publish like everything that comes from the tap and type of these little fingers is magic.

Except, now I also have the real confidence to know and admit when it is not.

I let myself flirt, I let myself tease, I let myself laugh until it bounces from the walls and I feel the fun is passed, instead of running around the room with a mason jar trying to catch it like my own ugly little firefly.

I am experiencing all emotions humanly possible, the good, the bad, and the deep-cutting ugly.

I have no idea what I’m doing, but crystal-clarity of where I’ve been and where I want to go. Something about that is so exhilarating, it takes my breath away each time that I look in the mirror and see the lines of crooked coffee-stained teeth warmly welcoming me into this new, healthier, happier version of the girl that I am now.

Within that welcoming warmness is a new promise to myself: to let myself write what I know, and to let it be truth or fiction, or fiction within the truth.

And, as a bonus treat, to never tell you what is real and what is not.

Because here, all is both and all is none, and for me, the fun I’ll find in that is beyond invaluable.

Think of the gossip! Think of the shock! Think of the headlines that will splash on the facebook pages and twitter feeds of all my family and friends, when it is debated years from now what was truth and what was fiction, and what it says about me that I won’t admit an answer to either question.

I’m excited to write words that I mean, and share them without a shade of embarrassment. To press publish in the flush of excitement, and fear, instead of allowing the flush to turn into the fever of embarrassment and dread that nudges my hands over to deletion.

I’m excited to let the romantic in me be hopeless and hope-filled again, to let her flowery words come in quite the courage, and not try to mask them for something that sounds more masculine in hopes that it be mistaken for strength.

There is strength in feminity, too.

But we’ll get to that.

We’ll get to all of it.