A New Paige

I'd be lying if I said this was my first blog.

My very, very first blog I started back when I first discovered the internet in my last years of high school. It was 1997 and I was so very "in" as I stayed up late at night, fiddling with text colors and placement. I was all about the aesthetics, even then. I choose bright yellow and a screaming red - modern, you know. And I dedicated page after page to the first of what would become a long string of unrequited love affairs. It wasn't always unrequited - none of them were, actually. They'd start quite, erm, "requited" and then something would change. But more about that later.

Then I did take a break from the blogging business for awhile. And I started back again in 2004 when I met the soon-to-be(ex)husband. I had much to say about all those wedding details, you know. And of course, it was all planned from the curl in my hair to the 6 pence in my shoe. I never let go of those aesthetics (or the unrequited love affairs... only this one was with the man in my mind versus the man in front of me... but again, more about that later.)

After settling in to married life... and then divorced life a couple of years later, I decided it was time to turn a new Paige and I began a new blog about my life. It was the innocuous kind, the kind I hope this one will become. It was all about me and my heart ache and more than one on that list of unrequited love affairs. I wrote about my dogs, my cooking (or lack thereof) adventures... my explorations of self.

That blog ended, well, shall we say tragically. There is a limit to how much one should put "out" there. (Especially if one is out-putting from work. Ahem. Lesson learned.) That Paige was destroyed abruptly. The entries, of course, are saved. I've read back through them and they hurt my heart. I'd like to think I've changed since then. It's possible.

I had another, completely anonymous and totally fantastic blog. It was... oh, it was a side of me that I never, ever shared. And it was writing like I've never, ever written. I wish for it to be discovered some day and turned into one of those silky, luxuriously covered books on that one shelf in the shelf far to the right at Barnes and Noble. You know, the kind with the red satin bookmark that holds you at that last tantalizing page until you can break free from the real world and lock yourself in a bathroom and light some candles and pick it up again? Yeah, that kind of book. I loved that side of me.

So here we are, back in the present. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this page is a culmination of all of those Paiges. I expect there will be some innocuous blathering on and on about my cooking (or lack thereof) adventures. There will probably be some mumblings about the new soon-to-be husband. And of course the latest challenge in my life that comes packaged in 11 and 9 year old stepdaughters. You may even see a bit of that hidden Paige, too.

Regardless, I hope to keep it interesting as I'm a real... Paige Turner.