and when she turned to me, i absorbed all the sunlight in her eyes like the kid i should’ve had the chance to be.
i’ve not grown much in my age, but i’ve grown far in my comprehension, and in my stubborn desire to see the best in every living being. for so long, this did not apply to myself. i read back on what i’ve written here in only the past couple of years and i do not look down on a younger self without perspective, without knowing things could and truly would get better. but i do weep at the words of bitter self-loathing. of this creature so convinced there was something permanently and inherently evil with his own existence. i don’t think i ever realized i was doing it, either. i think i was so convinced of my inescapable fate of being just flat out a “bad person” that it permeates every inch of the pages without me ever having seen it poisoning the ink. after all, how could it be poison if it was simply true to me, i suppose.
love takes many forms, and it’s only very recently i’ve found myself capable of understanding that to its fullest extent. and capable of seeing and accepting the ways it can change. i love my boyfriend, the one person i can rest my soul completely within and trust i will not be harmed, only understood to an unfathomable degree. i love my sister, even though we come from very different worlds and very rarely manage to play the same notes when it comes to knowing how to operate around/with one another, we’ve managed to survive this long. i love every stranger i’ve ever briefly interacted with or simply observed because the world is so full of people experiencing anything and everything, and we truly have no limitations on what makes a human a whole being. i love the family i lost before i could understand or appreciate what they were to me. i love my adoptive parents, even though as of late, this has been the most difficult love to accept i have and the changes it has gone through. i love them even though i have had to make painful and devastating sacrifices of pieces of myself i find beautiful and imperative, because i want family and community, and i do desperately hope there will come a day where they will appreciate those sacrifices and no longer require that of me.
i love my mother, despite the horrors we have gone through, despite the pain she has inflicted, often unintentional, though not always. i love her because i know how hard she struggled, how much she did not want to love herself, how violent the world has been to her. i don’t ignore the pain and difficulties she has caused, but i am willing to give grace to these things because i know why they happened, and because she has put so much effort towards changing. i love her because she does know exactly who i am, and is one of very few i can trust to see me the way i see myself.
i love myself now, finally, because there are people that i love who love me in return. because there are pieces of myself i see in every person i love, and i cannot bring myself to hate even those things in anyone i care for deeply.
and when the sun fell down, uncertainty filled the moments of the dusk. but she continued drinking her tea, believing her prayers, and then the moon rose, breathtakingly grand. the kid i should’ve been wanders away. he wasn’t meant to stay here, so i simply forgive.