Saturday, July 25, 2009

a new beginning

i started this blog with no idea of where i was going to go with it.
i know that i wanted something separate from my space at stumbleupon (SU).
there were many reasons why i joined SU in 2006 but i think it was mainly boredom.
i had just qualified as a chartered accountant and had a great job with good prospects.
i was married, just bought a new house, had a good relationship with family and had some nice friends too.
i wasn't supposed to still be unhappy with all of this.
but i was... B O R E D ! ! !

anyway... SU's been a great distraction... but, deeper than that, it's really helped me define this "ani" person.
for a large part of my life, i'd been known by another name. let's call her Maria (the real name is too horrid for words).
anyway... Maria was a good little girl. she went to sunday school every sunday.
she came top of the class and got A's for everything.
she was prefect and head girl and all things sugar and spice.
she was also fat and ugly and basically disappeared into the background, so as not to offend too many people with her mere presence. (yes, i've always been like this. ;P)
slowly but surely, she was spotted by another girl trying to hide away from the world.
together, they explored the darkest corners of their hearts and minds... and, together, they found some light.
that girl was my boni and i will always love her for that. always. xx

anyway. somehow, i made it through high school with a boyfriend and was off to find some freedom at university. little did i know that university was just a big high school, where everyone's on break all the time. and i HATED break time. *sigh*
the one good thing i managed to do was change my name back to anita. with that, came a lot of bad memories, but i would deal with those later.
oh, and i also discovered the internet.. which was the beginning of another part of my life and would later help me more than i would ever believe.
otherwise, there was no time to "discover" myself as i became a graduate and girlfriend while maintaining my other challenging roles as daughter and friend.
a quiet desperation started to grow... and i was soon hit with a dark depression.

being "anita" was not easy. stuff from my childhood came back to haunt me... these things never go away. i'd spent most of my life running and hiding away from me... now i had to face it.
after getting the help i needed, i came to embrace "little anita" and tried my best to make up for lost time.
but, being a little girl in a big world is not an easy task. i never did feel the acceptance that she so deperately needed. ofcourse.. i was looking in all the wrong places at the time...
anyway, i carried on... getting a nice job, being a nice girl, getting married, doing housewifey stuff.
and the desperation grew...

as my real life became more unreal, i escaped further into the unreal and the cyber world.
looking back, i realised i was looking for a place to just be me.
for a long time, my tag line was "stumbling through life, just being me."
that only seemed possible online.
slowly, i started realising that online people were real people... and, if they could like me as i was.. well.. maybe i was ok, just as i was.

to be continued...