Your Mistakes Do Not Define You
I know things seem hard right now. You don’t shine like the other girls, your heart is loud but you keep it quiet. You feel like you’re living on the edge of something incredible, something vast and life changing, but you’re just one step behind, just an inch out of reach.
I know things seem hard right now. You don’t shine like the other girls, your heart is loud but you keep it quiet. You feel like you’re living on the edge of something incredible, something vast and life changing, but you’re just one step behind, just an inch out of reach. You feel like you have the answers on the tip of your tongue, like if you could just figure out the bigness of your feelings everything would be okay, but it isn’t going to work like that. You’re not going to crack yourself open so easily. It’s going to take time.
You’re going to break one day. You won’t expect it. No one will. You have always been a pillar of strength, a faultless foundation, but you have never been truly happy. You won’t be able to remember the last time your smile was honest, the last time you felt joy wash over you like soft rain. You’re going to throw in the towel. You’re going to be tired. You’re going to crack and break and fray, and you’re going to try to hide it all away. You’re going to try to sweep it under the rug of loud laughs and accomplishment. But you need to rest. Allow yourself to rest.
You’re going to meet a boy whose love is like a maze, and you will get lost in him. You will get lost. And at first, you will think he is exactly what you needed, that you are right where you were always meant to be, that the love he is giving you is exactly what you deserve. But you’re going to wake up one morning and your chest is going to feel like a shaken up soda can. You’re going to wake up one morning in a city you never liked, in an apartment you never wanted, in a relationship that suddenly feels too tight, too small, and you must leave. You must.
You’re going to ruin a lot of relationships in your life. You’re going to run away from a lot of hearts that would have been able to contain all of the love you had pounding against your bones. But you won’t see that. It will take you a long time to see that. See, you’re going to leave because you don’t feel good enough, because you don’t believe that you are worthy of being loved and cared for. You’re going to leave because you’d rather be the one to walk away, you’d rather be the one who says the goodbye before they have to hear it. You have to forgive yourself for this. You cannot fix the hurts you caused.
You’re going to make a lot of mistakes. They will pile up within you and it will be in your nature to grip at them until your hands are bruised. Let them go. Please, let them go. One day you’re going to see just how they conspired to grow you from the ground up. One day you’re going to see how they do not define you, but how they helped for you to define yourself. One of those mistakes is going to lead to you into a book, into a job you love. One of those mistakes is going to turn into you going to the right party, at the right time, where you meet someone who makes your whole damn soul light up. One of those mistakes is going to lead you to yourself, is going to introduce you to the most gruesome and flawed parts of who you are, and you are going to face them. You will face them — and you will flourish. You will feel like yourself for the first time in your life, and you will finally, finally be free. 