Fourteen years ago...

 

... a photographer and incredibly talented acquaintance from D's gym, Gabrielle, offered to do a photoshoot with me. She also wanted to style me, fix my hair, and do my makeup. She brought some stuff (including this floofy skirt) and looked through my closet (the shirt and shoes) and came up with three looks, changing makeup and hair for each. It was a fun few hours, and it really meant a lot to me.

I knew at that point that I was going to leave Sherman, and it was a neat little bow to put on the end of my time there.

When I look at these pictures, which include a bunch taken around my RV and in the park where I lived, I can remember exactly how I felt, why I was leaving, what my heart ached for, and what a "dead end" sign seemed to be posted on the road to where I believed my happiness lay. 

This was a world without Mal in it. A world where I'd spent the past year and a half of my life trying to get my church, my world, to approve of me. A world where James was just a guy I'd had a crush on in high school. A world where I could not imagine where my only (at the time) child would take me over the next decade.

In this picture, it seems like I'm looking back and resting for a minute before embarking on a whole new life: moving to Austin, growing my family, finding a community in a tiny town I never heard of before we came to look at a house I saw online. 

I'm not friends with ANYONE from those days. I'm not in touch with a soul from Sherman. I cannot see how any of my acquaintances would fit into my world anymore. After trying so hard to jam my square peg into the round hole I desperately wanted in, I cannot imagine something that sounds worse to me now. 

As always, onward and upward.