Please for the love of all that is holy—Josh, allow me TO READ without jealousy, fear, or hatred.

This is meant to be looked back upon.

I'm using it as a milestone, a way to look back at a specific date when I decided to turn my life around for the better.

Granted, solid resets into a new, better life do not exist. Time does not work that way.

The reason this is important, the reason these words, the reason these words that I'm writing right NOW are much more important than anything else I've done today is because they mark the start of a change in mind and soul for me.

Until now, in given comparison to the majority of active users on this site, I DO NOT READ STORIES.

This is... ridiculous. How can that be? Me, the guy who wants to see these stories synthesized together, me? Of course I know that sounds vain. In context I'm speaking to a future me, one who can look back on this post and laugh as he cries.

Why not?

The question remains.

If you love this all so much, why didn't you just go out and start somewhere, why didn't you do it for your own enjoyment?

I can answer that question.

Jealousy. Fear. Loneliness. Anxiety. Paranoia. Depression. Worry. Hatred. Sadness.

In non-poetic words, the reason it took me six years, SIX 'EFFING YEARS to get to this point, is because I was afraid.

I was afraid of what I might discover.

I was afraid I would never be as good as any of the writers I encountered.

I was afraid that I would know that my idea could never do justice to the reality of what was already built up and continues to be built up every single day before my very eyes—with a love and passion unbridled by anything I had ever encountered before.

Meanwhile, I sat empty-handed.

So I decided not to look—but all of you, those of you who were not afraid, who loved and gave love in return, you continued to build. You persisted. By comparison, I continued to feel worse and worse about myself, and this cycle of self-hatred continued even as I tried forge a path alone.

Looking back, this decision, this lack of doing what fundamentally makes this website what it is, the decision to NOT READ A GODDAMN STORY in two whole years, was a terrible, terrible mistake, and it's not just to myself I have to apologize to but to those of you I could have met in the meantime.

And thus, by walking forward, into the lights of others that they gave to us as a gift, I am set free.

Love,
—Joshua Aaron Skousen