Can I Believe in Me?

It's harder to believe in ourselves than it is to believe in others.

When I was a little girl, my mom told me I could do anything and be anything I wanted. I wanted to be a firefighting pop star policewoman who also saved wild animals; I was an ambitious child. I tore apart travel magazines and posted pictures around my room from all over the world, places I wanted to see, things I wanted to do.

I wanted to see a bull run in Spain, the original Olympic games in Greece, to walk the Roman roads in Italy, to run along the coast of Scotland.

I wanted to do and see incredible things, I wanted to go on adventures and experience life to the fullest degree possible.

Then...life happens.

And as a girl, it can hit particularly hard.

As to what happened, well I'm a girl living in a cruel world and I became part of a certain statistic before I turned 6. I'm sure you can figure it out from there.

From there I became a lonely child, to a lonely and scared teenager, to an adult who became afraid of the world.

I've been hurt, betrayed, violated, and too many other things to list.

When you've been hurt by the world, how can it hold the same interest for you?

I've thought about that a lot lately.

I'm a broke college student at 28 years old with a busted car and bills.

I don't dream about traveling the world or having adventures; I work hard to keep what I have, I don't have time to think about much else.

However, while cleaning out my closet I found a scrapbook I made as a kid of all the places and things I wanted to do.

I couldn't help but smile to myself looking at the ripped pictures of Athens and a label from a bottle of olives my favorite brought from Pompeii. A postcard from London that I found at a garage sale with a list of pubs I wanted to visit. I mapped out a road trip through Canada in the summertime with a list of french phrases to remember.

I had hand drawn maps of the Rocky Mountains to hike through, maps that folded out beyond the page of filming locations of movies I liked, and a list of maps to acquire.

There were lists of things to do in major cities, trips to plan, events to see, and things to eat.

As I combed through the book, I giggled at some of the things I had found all over the world but I was also sad.

Where did this little girl go?

I can very easily blame the people that hurt me, that made me see the world at it's absolute worst.

But now, 20 years after the fact, I feel like that reason has dwindled.

I let that girl go because I wanted to protect her, I built a wall and hid behind it and let no one in. If no one could get in, no one could hurt me again.

For 20 years, I felt like I was doing that right thing but now, I realize that time for that pain may finally be passing.

I remember putting this book together. The feel of the sticky glue, the occasional paper cut on my fingertips, and the glitter pens that bled on the pages. I sorted through the pictures so carefully and spent ages deciding whether to put these trips in order alphabetically or how much I wanted to go there.

I want to make that little girls dream come true.

I'm ready to try and do the things I once dreamed.

More than anything, I want to not trust that the world won't hurt me but that I will trust myself to be stronger.