when we are only truly afraid of the things that have already happened to us.

there is nothing more beautiful and wonderful and happy and all those feelings combined then being able to sit here and say i healed last week.

so much.

i told a friend some things about me. things i thought i had done wrong. he listened, and he didn't run away. he stayed. that was new for me. to have someone sit there, and stay.

but in the end, he said something i wasn't expecting. he said, "hannah, it isn't your fault. and you don't have to feel this burden anymore."

and it took days to believe that, because even i denied it for a while. but a week later, i've got the truth in one hand and the lies in the other. and every morning when i wake up i am proud to say i have been choosing the truth.

* * *

Satan played with my head for months over some things. told me these things were all my fault and i had screwed up big time. and i wasn't going to be forgiven for them. ever.

i felt so ashamed and had all this guilt weighing me down, i almost didn't make it. i really didn't. thoughts of ending it all began to slowly seep back in...

but at the end of my rope, God put someone in my life to give me a hand up.

and that hand up saved me. it really did.

things i'd been carrying around for months, blaming myself for, weren't even mine to bare.

that's what truth showed me.

today i understand what being vulnerable- and i mean completely laying your heart out there for someone to see fully- can do to a person. what it can do is heal a person.

when i told this friend everything, that in itself was scary. because, you see, i think that people really fear what has already happened to them. a lot of the time. and i fear losing someone again.

i fear trusting someone, believing in them, loving them, and then having them leave. that is what terrified me the most about being vulnerable with this new friend. someone i barely knew.

time and time again, someone gets to know me a little and then i don't hear much from them again. because i was too quiet. too reserved. and they didn't want to bother with me.

so when i met with this friend for coffee a week ago yesterday, i prepared myself for the worst. i prepared myself because i figured he wouldn't want to get together again.

but he did.

for the first time in my life, he did.

it didn't matter how quiet i was. he kept pulling me to get me to be brave. and i'm so glad he did. he didn't leave or walk out of that coffee shop. he didn't give up on me.

* * *

you know what is so much fun? to look back at three years ago. when i thought i would never mend. never move on from losing a friend. my only friend. i thought she would be my last.

but i can see now that she isn't. she won't be.

because of my newest friend, i'm going back to communities i left behind out of fear. out of fear of having a broken heart in the end.

but being broken is something i'm just going to have risk.

i don't know what the outcome of all of this will be. i don't.

but isn't that the point of being brave?

yeah, yeah i am pretty sure it is.

alright then. let's do this thing.