Good enough.

When I was 15, I decided I was dropping out of school. For no real reason other than I hated being there and wasn't very good at concentrating long enough to do very well. As you can imagine, 15-year-olds are very wise and think through all their decisions very carefully. I did as well.

I woke up on a Tuesday, showered and dressed for school, and then decided I would never go back there again.

I was a little taken aback when my father, who'd been making mad passionate love to his beer bottle in a motel after the divorce, took notice and forced me back to school. He also forced me to see a counselor at the school who I was absolutely certain I would not like. But my father scared the living fuck out of me so I did as I was told.

I went to see this counselor and was mainly happy I got out of class to do so. Things started out fine, I explained my well thought out plans to drop out of high school and he listened intently. Then there were more things I wanted to talk about but my mouth wouldn't work.

For weeks I spent 45 minutes at a time sitting in that office not saying a word. I sat in a chair on my hands, feeling so stupid, wanting to open my mouth but not being entirely sure what I should say. Mr Rozema let me do this for weeks and weeks.

He would stare at me and wonder what the hell I was thinking. I would sit on my hands looking down at the ground with tunnel vision and my heart racing. Finally, I started to talk.

I talked there when my father killed himself the following year. I talked through my senior year when all I wanted to do was die. Sometimes, things were hard to say with words, so I started writing in journals for him to read. I'd drop them off on Friday and he'd read them, write notes back and bring them back to me on Monday. Over the summer, I'd mail him my journal entries and he'd send them back lovingly noted with the right words to keep me going.

They were a life line.

I clung to his words because he loved me and thought I would be okay and I wanted so badly to believe him. He patiently read through page after page of self hatred and loathing. He answered me with the truth as he saw it. He told me the ugly things I believed about myself were lies fed to me by people who couldn't love me enough. He told me I was a good writer, he liked reading what I had to say.

He told me I was good enough. I wanted to believe him and I held on. Barely, but I did the best I could to survive.

Logan's been gone and I've been fighting back a huge tear in my stomach. I don't understand what the tear is, but it's scaring me. I couldn't sleep on Tuesday night thinking about the tear and how I'm so much better than I was. That life is so much better than it was. Why am I still hurting like this?

In the middle of the night I went up into the attic and found those old journals I used to write. I wanted to read them because I thought it would make me feel better to see how far I've come. I started reading them and couldn't put them away. I read until I fell asleep with the lights on. I read the next day and the day after that.

Usually when you read your old journals or diaries, you Cringe with the humiliation of it all. The overblown drama of hormones and boys and that U2 concert your mom won't let you attend. Reading my journals and the notes my counselor wrote back to me, I didn't cringe. Not once.

I did punch a hole in the wall reading my 17 year old self saying earnestly, "It's just that if I eat what you're asking me to, I'll weigh at least 120 pounds and I can't live with that."

Uh....if I ever run into my 17-year-old self at a party, remind me not to let her see me stand on a scale.  She would be unhappy with the way things turned out with the 'normal eating' thing.

I didn't cringe at my words. I was awed at my emotional clarity back then, at my ability to understand my feelings. To understand why I was struggling, but struggling anyway.

I obsessively read my words and that tear in my stomach went to my eyes and hasn't stopped coming out since then.

Which is great because Logan's gone.

I decided to look up Mr Rozema and send him an email.

"I've been reading these old notes we used to send back and forth and I don't think I knew it at the time but you saved my life. You made me feel loved and you made me understand how nearly all of the things I believed about myself were lies fed to me by people who didn't love me at all or enough.

I think I chose Logan as my husband because I knew you, so one day my children will have you to thank too."

And I sent off the email and told him everything I've done with my life since the last time we talked. My heart swelled with pride when I told him about the writing I'm doing. When I showed him pictures of my babies and my husband and of us together like the family he told me I would one day have but I never believed him, I started to cry.

Because I thought all I've done would make me whole. That if I did enough and was enough I would fill this black hole in my soul with so much stuff, that it wouldn't matter so much.

I thought having a good husband who loves me and amazing children who can quote spongebob and love me in spite of my imperfections and friends who give me so much of what I need and a career I couldn't have imagined as a teenager, I thought it would all make me okay.

He told me back then, most of my life was very bad and as I grew, I would add more layers of good experiences. Like a large cliched onion, as I grew up and had more experiences, this black part of myself would still be there but it would be so small in comparison to the rest of the things I've done and love I've been given, it wouldn't matter so much.

But still, there's that tear in my stomach that plagues me. I can't make it go away.

Reading these journals scares me. It scares me for the same reason I teetered on the edge of suicide back then. What if this is the best I can do? What if, considering everything I had to fight to overcome, this is as good as it can ever be?

And maybe that's not enough.