I must not forget:

Reading over my ridiculous amount of blogs, I realize that I have often fallen so in love with an idea or ideas of something and how it should be. School. Family. Growing up. Life.

Love.

When I was a little girl, I used to pretend that I would marry Barbie one day. And Skipper. And Ariel. Sometimes Belle, too. Not all at the same time, of course, but at different stages. As I grew older, I realized that Belle had the Beast, Ariel had Eric, and Barbie had Ken. Girls loving boys, not loving girls. But I loved them. I wanted to be Kimberly, the Pink Ranger. I wanted to love Tommy, the Green Ranger, then the White Ranger, but I mostly just loved his ponytail.

There was a Hispanic family down the street from my mom's house. We knew their family because my mom's husband, the man who made me call him Papa, knew them. The family separated, and the girls who lived there moved away with their mother. I missed the girl so much, but she came back sometimes on the weekends. There was a play area in their basement where we liked to play house together. Her name was Ellie. She was beautiful. She was my husband, and sometimes I was her husband. I held her hand, and after we put the kids to sleep, we would crawl in our tent and she would kiss me.

Life was easier back then, even though it really wasn't. I spent a lot of my childhood and even most of my adulthood hating myself for being so attracted to women. Love, as my father so adamantly reminded me during every election, was between a woman and a man. Marriage, he told me, is only between a man and a woman. Do what you want, but I better not see or hear about it. That was his motto. Somewhere along the way, I decided to stop arguing and just hate his political views on everything. If my father liked it, then I obviously couldn't.

One awful, cold winter day, in the middle of a writing assignment on Metamorphosis, it hit me. It was a smack in the face, even though I had been flirting with the idea for as long as I could remember. Love isn't a cut and dry definition, nor is anything that really matters.

Over the years, and even until that awful, beautiful winter day, I forced myself to look only at boys. I had no problem with gay people. In fact, I liked them more--probably because they were being who they truly were. But I heard the word love, and I told myself, "Boys, Kat. Fall in love with boys." So I tried. I made up these insane scenerios in my head where I would "love" and marry a boy, and then he would let me see a girl on the side. (Yes, I am insane).

I also feel so very far in love with the idea of this perfect love, that I forgot who I was.

This year has been a year of throwing out old definitions, and building new ones. Not getting caught up in cycles that drag me down, but looking forward to the new cycles that make me think of who I want to be (thanks, Discovery). And the person that I have become as a result is actually someone I like to be around.

My past definitions have held me back for so long. So many ideas, thoughts, feelings; But I am not my past. I am here, now. And I will be someone with a future.