Your Heart is as Black as Night

Lately, I've been trying to become myself again.

Sounds strange, right? It is. It's a weird feeling, realizing that you've been slightly off for the past few years. When I was 17 I was coming out of a deep depression that had lasted about four years (started at that wonderful age of 13 when everything is changing and nothing seems right). Determined to turn it all around, I changed everything about myself, confident that if I stayed the same, the darkness would come back. Confident that my identity, this girl with raccoon eyes and torn jeans and band t-shirts and jet black hair, was the problem, was projecting this darkness out and right back onto me.

Not everything changed, obviously. But a lot of little things that made me *me* got left behind. I stopped reading books, fantastical, magical books, because they left me longing for worlds I could never know. I got rid of the eyeliner and threw out all the band t-shirts. I even stopped playing music, because for so long, music had made me cry.

I stopped letting myself feel deeply, because the distance I could fall once the floodgates opened was unfathomable and terrifying.

But with recent changes that have left me alone and striving for independence, I've realized that I can bring back some of those things. I've realized that I'm secure enough now in body, mind and spirit that I can look at myself in the mirror with my dark eyes and my band t-shirt and not think, god that girl looks so emo and dark. No, instead I think, that's me. That's Juliana. Because the truth is, being yourself is not only your foundations and your values, and neither is it the color of your hair. It's all those things combined, all the little things, and all the big things. You are all that you are. Nothing less, nothing more.

Not everything was a bad change. For example, quitting my frequent hair dyeing and letting it revert back to its natural state was a very good decision. I also accepted that my favorite color is, in fact, pink, something I had always fought because it was soo girly and I was *not* to be seen as girly, I was a tough motherfucker (ahem).

Last weekend, I donned my smoky black eyes and went to an Opeth concert. Katatonia opened for them and they were both amazing amazing amazing. Standing there in the crowd, surrounded by long-haired boys and spiky-haired girls and tattoos and a twisted appreciation for growling, I felt like myself again. Yeah, I like death metal (even though Opeth is only half death metal and Katatonia really isn't at all). Yeah, I like leather and piercings and grunge gods and ripped jeans and giant hoop earrings that make me feel a little ghetto. Yeah, I own a book on Wicca for the solitary practitioner...

And yeah, I also listen to jazz and love chiffon and laughing and babies and sunshine and putting on my pink apron and baking cookies.

And with all that put together, I'm a happy person.

xoxo
Maralah