I am slowly learning what it means to be human.

I am slowly learning how to forgive the past. How to accept that sometimes beautiful things end, that sometimes the timing isn’t right, that sometimes the messiness of life gets in the way. I am slowly learning that endings aren’t something to be upset about, but rather, I am slowly learning how to appreciate how damn lucky I was to experience something real and hopeful and light in a world that sometimes fails to be soft.

I am slowly learning how to be alone. I am slowly learning how to wake up in the middle of the bed. How to make just one cup of coffee in the mornings. How to hold my own heart, how to take up my own space. I am slowly learning how to stop filling voids with other human beings, and instead, I am slowly learning how to confront the void itself. How to heal it.

I am slowly learning what it means to be human. What it means to make mistakes and learn from them. What it means to be both happy and sad at the same time. I am slowly learning how to do the damn work. How to stop running from what is heavy and uncomfortable in my life. How to take the easy route less and less. How to grow myself, how to be a better person.

But most of all, I am slowly learning how to just be, in this moment. How to exist. How to understand that I cannot control life, that I can only experience it in both its light and its dark stages. I am slowly learning how to laugh and cry and feel through it all, how to welcome the confusion and the joy that comes with loving, and living, and breaking. I am slowly learning how to accept where I am.

I am slowly learning how to simply believe in the person I am becoming.