Who was that girl?

I read a diary entry from a year ago. Who is this girl? Why in the world were things so abysmally difficult for her? Apparently things are much more up right now than they've been in a long time. It's funny that, how I don't notice. There's still so much problems going on, it seems whether my insides are at 10% or 90% doesn't register a lot.

There's so much I want to tell you, but this one subject, I won't. Suffice to say the signs were there, the stars were aligned, I might have started down a path, but I was too slow. I say that not with bitterness, but with pride. Whether or not I succeeded, even the possibility has been a rebirth in fire. Such small things that become so large, and now, new and fresh, I suddenly see the possibilities. To those it concerns, even if they have no clue this is going on at all, thank you. By trying, and failing, in my own silent way, I have learned that I can. The mysterious door turned out to be open. It just didn't work out this time.

I am slow. It's becoming clear that this is a part of my core self. I can speed up temporarily but tend to make poor decisions and it costs great amounts of energy. It takes me days, months, in this case a year, to get used to ideas, get comfortable with something new, emotionally accept solutions I've intellectually figured out in minutes. It means opportunities pass me by. But I like this part of myself, actually. It means while others zoom by and miss the details, I can stop and look at a tree and marvel at how many leaves it has. I wouldn't trade that feeling for the world. Wouldn't trade it for you either, even if it's been tearing my heart out. The hurt was good. I could stop and look at that too, and it was evidence. Evidence of great things, that filled my head with marvel and inspiration.

One of my favorite quotes:
"The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." -John Milton, Paradise Lost.