I created this blog—my very first Tumblr account—in January 2012, about two months after a very, very bad breakup. He and I had been together 4 and a half years, and he was going to propose to me when we graduated from college that spring. We were going to get married, have three kids and live happily ever after. I thought I had my life figured out. Until one day, I realized I didn’t.

I couldn’t put my finger on why at the time, but I knew I would never be truly happy if I stayed. I left behind the safety and comfort of a stable but lukewarm partnership and was just rediscovering my independence. This blog, and the community it connected me to, was a way for me to navigate circumstances I hadn’t been in for almost five years.

Going back through my archives from my early Tumblr days, I realized just how many changes 2012 brought to my life. Based on the reblogs and text posts I’d made, I could trace the emotional roller coaster I was on: The short-lived rebound boyfriend, two desperate crushes on very good friends, the “bad” boy I wished I’d meant more to than a one night stand. And then, about halfway through the year, none of that mattered, because I fell in love for real. With a girl.

Although I’d internally acknowledged my bisexuality since I was 13, I always assumed that, for me, girls would just be for flings and hookups. I grew up in a relatively conservative family, so while I was comfortable with myself around my friends, a serious relationship with a woman didn’t seem like an option. I didn’t realize it then, but my Tumblr simultaneously chronicled my coming out, my falling in love and my falling out with the people who had trouble accepting my “sudden” change in preference, perhaps better than any formal diary did. As our relationship grew stronger, my dependence on Tumblr as an outlet waned. I no longer needed the vast, anonymous Internet to help me work through my problems because I had her instead. I posted less and less frequently, and then I just stopped.

I am no longer with that woman (in fact, we are amicably divorced and share “custody” of the dog we got together during our relationship), but I love that I have a record of everything that led up to her. Thought it’s easy to scoff at my overdramatic, “I know everything” 21-year-old self, it’s also a little bittersweet to remember how much emotional turmoil I was in back then. I admit I’m a bit embarrassed about just how ridiculous I sometimes sounded, but I refuse to delete anything. It’s a way for me to reach back through my own past, and in some ways, although she can’t hear me, I feel like it’s a way for me to tell Younger Me that she’ll pull through. Her family will come around. Her true friends will be supportive. This love she was so conflicted about will change her life. And she didn’t have to run away from home to make all that happen. 

And yet, I know that Younger Me had to go through all that to become the strong, stable person I am today. I think my real motivation for keeping this blog is to help me understand how I got here. How all the broken hearts taught me about love. How the fights with my parents actually strengthened our honesty and openness. How moving out on an entry-level salary with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans forced me to grow up and stop taking the comfortable life I had for granted. As Frederick Douglass famously said, “without struggle, there is no progress.” And man, was he right.

I probably won’t ever post to this blog again, so I just want to thank all the wonderful strangers here who helped me understand myself better. Whether you know it or not, you made a difference in my life, and I very likely wouldn’t be who I am without the gift of self discovery Tumblr bestowed upon me. 

If I have but one lesson to impart to anyone who might see this, anyone who might be where I was about four years ago, it’s this: Be brave. Be brave enough to fight for what you want. Giving up something that’s stable but doesn’t make you happy doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It means you are wise enough to realize that your happiness should come first, and no one is going to hand it to you on a silver platter. You have to go after it yourself, cling tightly to those who support you, and drop anyone who doesn’t, no matter how much it hurts. Because as cliche as it sounds, it really does get better—but only if you allow it to.

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