Someone went ham.

I don’t check my stats every day. I really only check them when I’ve posted something new. Gotta get that sweet, sweet dopamine by seeing my views go up. But if I haven’t posted that day or the day before, I typically don’t bother to check.

That’s why it completely escaped my notice that on February 22, someone found my blog and just went nuts. I mean they were reading some really old stuff. And embarrassing stuff at that.

Why was it embarrassing? I would say mostly because a lot, A LOT, of my old writing doesn’t reflect who I am anymore. And rereading some of them I wonder how much they reflected who I was at the time. I suppose they did. But so much of my life was wrapped up in trying to fit into the church world of rural Missouri that I honestly can’t say if much of what I wrote then was me. I censored myself a lot back then. I wanted to speak truth to power but in a likable way. I wanted to rock the boat enough but not tip it over. I wanted to persuade with pretty, witty writing and I feared angering the people in my life.

Yesterday I found myself in a parking ramp I hadn’t been in for about a year. The last time I was there I had a boyfriend and I thought we were in love. If I’m being honest, I hoped we’d be together for a very long time. We broke up a few months later. We’re still very good friends but being in that parking ramp today brought back a flood of memories and emotions from a year ago. And I realized just how much has changed in a year, how much I’ve changed.

Change.

I started this blog over 11 years ago because I frequently had a lot on my mind and I wanted an outlet for it. And yet, I still censored myself and tried to make myself palatable for my readers. Looking through what my mysterious fan read on the 22nd, I can’t believe just how much my life has changed. Especially in the last 3.5 years since my ex-husband left. This blog and my Instagram account (which I started in 2010) have both acted as a kind of public diary for life and the lives of my kids for a long time now. So any time I go in and do a deep dive on either account I get a glimpse into the past, and often I don’t like what I see.

But recent events in my life have been putting things in perspective for me. And something I’ve realized is just how much I’ve been running from who I was and running from problems I didn’t want to face. I took a good, hard look at myself yesterday and realized I had been lying to myself about a lot of things for quite a while.

There are parts of me that are so beautiful and powerful. Parts that’ve been with me since I was young. I see those parts here in my past and now in my present. And there are parts of me that are embarrassing, parts that are corrupt, parts that are dishonest, parts that are unkind. I see those in both my past and present as well. Looking over who I’ve been before and who I am now, I realize how much I want to nurture those beautiful, powerful parts of me. And seeing all the times I’ve lied to myself, and all the running I’ve done these last few years, I know I have to stop running and start being honest.

Whoever you are that found my blog and brought up the past, thank you. You inadvertently caused me to have to take a real look at myself. I have to litigate my past and confront my present. I need to burn the chaff and salvage the sweetness and goodness that is in me. I need to stop running.

I constantly say I’m working on myself but now I wonder if that’s been a lie. I know I will be from now on.

So thanks, Ham, whoever you are.