Happy New Year.

I won't mince words, 2007 was an extremely difficult year for me. After major issues with my health and a "quarter-life crisis," or the twenty-two-year-old career blues, as I like to call them, I fell in love for the first time since the demise of my first major long-term relationship. Now I have two broken hearts to put on my shelf.

I had written a very lengthy personal entry to share with you all, but upon reading it I felt very vulnerable and depressed, so I decided against posting it. That said, I look forward to 2008. I hope it will be a year of change and of healing. In the future I hope to take better care of myself and to guard myself against those wolves in sheep's clothing who are capable of hate and manipulation I thought impossible by a person loved by so many.

I am determined to spend more time appreciating those who have continued to support and care for me, those who really know me and accept me for who I am and less time fretting about aimless people with no sense of self who get a rise out of controlling and ultimately destroying others.

I love my family and my friends more than I can say. May will mark my two year anniversary in New York. While we've had our spats, I realized, walking home from a bar a few weeks ago around 3AM, as it started to snow, that I love this city. Even if its crowded streets and lovely neighborhoods sometime become shades and ugly reminders of deceit and cowardice, there is nothing like New York, and there never will be. I feel honored and baptized by its strange, seductive melange of violence and romance.

With that said, all my best to you, dearest reader.
I hope you flourish in the new year.

Jessica

P.S. It's crazy how much I've changed. (My hair!) This photo is from the beginning of my sophomore year at college, 2005.



2006:


And December, 2007.