You Are A Fine Work Of Infinite Pieces

When I was younger, boys used to tell me that I was intimidating and too tall. People used to tell me that my laugh was too loud, that my thoughts were too big, too poetic, and that I needed to smile more in a certain way but not too much, because smiling too big is uncool but smiling too little isn’t pretty.

I listened to them; heck I definitely believed them at many times.

But one of my favorite parts of growing up has been that I get to decide who I am, who I believe myself to be, who to I understand myself to be. Because I understand my scars, my bruises, the sources of my joy, the textures of my dreams and beliefs.

It is no longer my job to be understandable and easily digestible but to be understanding.

I no longer have to shrink scoliosis small, but I can stand tall and walk and trip and stumble, the way that I do. I can be dorky and enthusiastic; I can dance badly; I can sing (not a singer, but I have a song). It’s not cute when I stumble, but I do laugh when I fall. Because in all of the darkness and seriousness and drowning death of this life, the grand heights of the mountains, the sweet twinkle of the skies and stars, the soft sweeping statements spoken into my soul, the true conversations and connections that find my spirit and continuously knock away at the layers under which my identity lies… there is magic.

If we are getting to know others and this life better as we live, we have to get to know ourselves.

Pour yourself on to paper; you are poetry.

The self within us that we have always been, that has been waiting, waiting and sleeping inside of us all along. This is worth celebrating.

You are a fine work of infinite pieces.