Year #4: Better late than never.

I had started my post yesterday, on the actual anniversary date of the blog, but as usual I was jammed at work with six hundred million clients and didn't even get past the first sentence, so... I'm a day late.  And a hell of a lot more than a dollar short, but that's another story altogether.

In some ways, I can't believe that it's been four years since I began this thing.  I'm such a different person now, in a lot of respects, even my way of thinking and approaching life has changed.  It's still very painful to go back in time and see the person that I was - confused, hurting, depressed, very insular and self-serving.  But I'd be denying that time in my life if I didn't confess to being all of those and a lot more.

I've made strides since then.  Lots of them.

On Monday, I received word that I was selected for a community supervisory assistant position with the agency I'm in now - but it only means one thing.

I'm out of the drug lab.  My last day there is this Friday.  Nearly 4 years later, I have moved on from this stage of my career, just as I seem to have moved on from everything else from that time.

In some ways, this is the culmination of years of sweat, hard work, pain, and the countless attempts to "heal thyself".  Have I healed sufficiently?  Most would seem to think yes, but I realize that it's still an ever-evolving process.  There's work to be done - always, more work to be done.  This time, though, I think I'm up for the challenges that are sure to come my way.

In the last couple of weeks, I have destroyed all electronic evidence of my entanglements with, uh, certain people that shall remain nameless (oh, all right, I mean the Douchebag, heh).  Everything is gone, erased, formatted, done.  All of the pain, the endless sentences, the logs of chats past - cyberspace has swallowed them all forever and has probably regurgitated it somewhere in another town, another chat room, another haven of desperation.  It is a weight off of my shoulders.  It is liberation.  Freedom.

The next things to go are the physical, tangible evidence - the souvenirs, the letters, the objects that were sent via the Postal Service.  I've only held on to them right now because there's nowhere for them to go just yet.  I'm not allowed to burn them, thanks to city regulations, otherwise that's EXACTLY what I would have done - a cleansing of the soul, I guess - so I'm timing it just right in that they'll be discarded on trash day and that the big green city pickup truck will crush and haul them away before I have a chance to change my mind.

But I don't think I WILL change my mind.  It's, after all, where they belong - so much trash, just like the essence of what the whole situation really was.

I have cut most of the ties that bind.  I am, indeed, TRULY free, and on to better things.

Year 4 might be a quiet one - I don't really write so much in here anymore, though I try to update as much as I can.  But.... quiet though it might be, it'll be the best year ever.

And that is a promise.