A Wandering Journey

I've been wanting to write about this for a while now.  About myself.  About my life and whatever journey or path that I'm on.  About my father's outsized influence in my life.  About my own growth as a person.  About my excruciating and liberating journey out of the Mormon church.  About my realization that the gender labels that I've been given don't fit me and how I can redefine who I am.  About how all of that comes together to make ME.

But the problem is: there are no straight lines.

I need some straight lines (right?) to tell the stories.  Maybe a timeline: a memoir where I start at my birth and end at my now.  Or a straight line where I start knowing not a lot and end knowing more than that.  Or a straight line where I explain something starting with the beginning of the story and take you through the journey in a way that is understandable and then we'll arrive at the end and we'll have all learned something together.

But there are no straight lines.

Believe me, I've tried to find them.  There are curvy lines that wander maybe endlessly.  There are zigzag lines that give you whiplash.  There are lines that cut through the middle and throw you off the path you thought you were on.  There are holes in the straight line that you're on and then up through the holes pop that old line from your childhood, like a sand worm coming out to attack you, and then it slithers back down, only to resurface later on when you thought you were finally safe.  There are periods that I tried to make into lines, but I ran out of ink and all I could do is smudge the dot and damage the paper.  

No straight lines.

No problem, though.  I realized that if I can't see the straight lines, then I don't have to present anything at all in a straight line format.  I can write about my journey in a way that comes to me when it comes and since that's all I have, and since that's honest, then maybe that is the best way to present it anyways.

So, hi, I'm Tamra.  Welcome to the story with no straight lines.