I'll bare all...

Funny how things work... I had a whole blog written, something pretty raw, and with an accidental slip of the finger, it was gone.

It wasn't the kind of thing I could rewrite.

Something totally different is about to come out instead.

I moved a lot as a kid, and because of that I think I developed some insecurities with myself. I never really saw my long-term value to others, because I was never long-term with others. The hardest move was from Pennsylvania to Long Island, because I went from the mountains to the suburbs. I'd been a city kid before that, but in the mountains I found something that appealed to me--freedom. I don't know if I've ever been happier than in that year and a half I spent wandering the woods and riding my bike over gravel roads.

But in the suburbs of Long Island there was none of this. I wasn't allowed to ride my bike past the block because it wasn't safe (not that there was anywhere fun to ride), and the kids at school were much harsher, more judgmental than they had been in Pennsylvania. Couple that with slowing adolescent metabolism and I was suddenly the overweight shy kid in junior high. I was a prime target for teasing and attack.

I rode the school bus home every day, and this one boy started sitting next to me uninvited, spending the entire half-hour trip telling me how much he liked me. My blushing was embarrassing. Even my skeptical self started to believe he was genuine after months of this. Every day, asking me out and me shaking my head 'no'--mostly because I was too shy and awkward with boys to manage much else.

And then one day it changed. One day he sat next to me, one of his friends in the seat across, and told me I was fat, and ugly, and that he'd never go out with someone like me. I was trapped, forced to stare out the window and hold back tears as they verbally abused me and shattered what little hope I'd had that maybe someone found me desirable.

Of course, everyone has stories like that. It's funny how things that happen to you as a kid can stick with you and feel so significant even later on. I grew out of my awkward stage, and feel relatively comfortable with myself now, but the truth is, I learned doubt from that experience.

And now, here, looking back on a relationship that ended with an unwillingness to do everything needed for our future, I wonder if it was a joke as well. And I wonder what it will take to make me trust again.

This childhood memory has been forward in my mind lately, and I'm figuring that means it's related to what I'm feeling now. A whole lot of insecurity.

But what's the proper response? I've thought of how liberating it might be to erase all hope, all dreams, all aspirations, to be a current of the wind, intangible, something you can't even point to and say, "there". And in the next thought I've been angry with myself, refusing to give up on dreaming, refusing to be discouraged.

And I've gotten reckless, craving adrenaline and danger. Driving dangerously, training for a marathon that's already doing damage, looking for something to push my limits. I want to do something incredibly stupid. That probably sounds self-destructive, but that's not the impetus. The point is survival, to feel alive, to refuse to let myself grow numb and curl up in a cocoon of anti-socialism.

And so the recklessness will likely continue, in every way. I'll bare myself, and bare I'll stand. I'll open my emotions up, open myself up to the criticism of the world. Tell me what you see. Tell me! I want to know. How desperately I want to know... Am I a disease that ruins a good thing? Am I too critical, too harsh? Could I ever be a good wife, a good mother? Or is there just too much work I have to do to get there? Maybe I'm just too independent. Is there someone out there who I won't drive into the ground with my over-achieving personality? Can I slow down long enough to settle down? I'm so restless sometimes... Tell me what you see. And maybe it will help me become a better Christian, a better daughter, a better friend, a better soldier of the truth.

Yet I haven't a clue who I'm talking to, posting on a blog no one knows I'm using.

Please tell me.