I've Got Passion!

I see you all snort-laughing and cough-coughing all over my blog comments.

You all think you're quite funny, don't you?

Lemme tell ya somethin': I've got passion!

I'm proud of my Harry Potter obsession!

Do you want to know why?

I bet you haven't considered why I'm so glad I'm passionate about Harry, have you? I know it seems silly for a thirtyish...well, okay ~ mid-thirties woman to be so ga-ga over a fictional teenager.

Harry conquered, and he did it with class.

Something I wasn't able to do...at least not at first. For several years I lolly gagged around like Moaning Myrtle. Boo-hiss, my life sucked. I told everyone how much, too. If it wasn't one thing it was another: first was the terrible pain, then there was the inability to work, on came the infertility, then the hysterectomy plowed through, and finally my marriage started tanking.

Looking back, it's no wonder most of my friends jumped ship. I jumped ship on myself. I didn't care one way or the other because I was so busy feeling sorry for myself I had one foot in the grave, anyway. My whole life was centered on my losses:

Loss of a mother.
Loss of innocence.
Loss of sanity.
Loss of a dream.
Loss of control over my marriage.
Loss of confidence in my abilities.
Loss of my trust that God knew best.
Loss of my job.
Loss of my fertility.
Loss of my home.
Loss of my uterus.
Loss of nerve.
Loss of the will to live.

Everything was one devastating loss after another. It all sounds so damn melodramatic: but that's the way it was for me.

Then a young woman named Crettie did something that changed my life as I knew it. I won't demean her by saying she did something courageous or selfless...I love her too much for that. She showed me what it looks like to love yourself ~ even if you don't feel that way at the time.

You see, I think you have to love yourself a lot to trust in your own judgment enough to follow through with an adoption plan. Something like that takes balls. Being able to trust yourself to do anything important takes nerve.

I didn't have that.

Not at all.

If you can envision the food chain, I would have placed myself down along the likes of plankton.

And then Crettie came along and loved me enough to trust me with her daughter. Then somewhere along the way I've learned to love myself. I've learned to love myself enough to have passion ~ about something, anything.

Until a year or so ago, living through the day was just that: putting one foot in front of the other until it was time to go to bed and start over.

I don't feel that way anymore.

I'm writing. I'm reading. I'm drawing. I'm living. I'm dreaming. I'm loving.

I'm planning.

I've let go of a lot of the anger that consumed me.

So what? Right now it's coming out in the form of a novella of fanfic. But people like it...which tickles me to no end. Why? Because I've always wanted to write. I've always lived in fiction-land, so this little jaunt into Harry-ville has been a catharsis for me. I've proved to myself I can do it.

So what if my blog is one long grammatical error after another...this is my thinking place; my stream-of-consciousness journal. I don't want to make journaling feel like it has to be perfect. Otherwise, I might not follow through with it.

But for right now I'm glad I feel passionate about Harry and Ginny. And if I buy a t-shirt that says I write fanfic; well, I'm going to wear that puppy with pride.

And then I'm going to go and re-trash all the things Elizabeth dumpster-dived for while I took the time to write this.