Reflections

I had a dream last night. In no particular direction, I walk. My feet feel heavy, and the intangible weights fastened to my ankles pull me down. I don’t know what the world looks like from this distorted view. My senses are stripped from me, and I just simply feel.

Profound words of another echo in my ears. As I lean into the sound that breaks the barrier, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. When I open them, I am face-to-face with myself, a mirror standing in the shape of a woman I’ve been, am becoming, and have yet to meet. The questions escape in a tangent from my mind, trapping themselves behind the glass that reflects it all back to me.

Behind me, I see the girl who would learn so much. I feel both happy and sorry for her. There is so much she will discover, but the hurt that comes with learning is sharp and unforgiving. What did I feel as love made its exodus? Numb? Piece by piece, the softest parts of me had been taken and discarded, leaving scabs that healed into armor.  Fear. The quiet cannibal eating away at our minds becomes an ethereal being we can’t capture, and we can’t quite destroy, so we compromise and learn to live with it. Why did I allow myself to live with that?

As I stare into every reflection of myself, I contemplate the answers to my questions, and they too weigh heavily on my mind. Toleration. Acceptance. Obligation. Guilt. Loneliness. All the small, invisible tethers that convince a person to stay, even as they are being emotionally torn apart. Have I become that monster?

Before me, I see the woman who is still learning what it means to survive. The woman who loves others even when she does not love herself. Hurdles appear at every turn; some built by others and some fashioned by my own hands. I trip over expectations, over the ruins of older versions of myself, and over the echoes of “not enough” that still cling to me. I do not love myself. I wish I did, but I don’t, not yet. I touch the glass, rippling a theory inside of me, that healing might begin the moment I stop searching for worth in the reflections and start searching for it in the woman doing the looking.

Beyond the woman I am now, another figure emerges, a version of me I have not yet grown into but somehow already recognize. She stands with a steadiness and a quiet knowing set deep into her green eyes. Her posture isn’t perfect, but it is rooted. She has weathered storms I have not yet named and has grieved things I have not yet lost, yet there is a softness to her that tells me she learned how to move forward without losing herself. She does not flinch at my gaze. She waits patiently, as if she has been expecting me. Hope stirs in my chest. Maybe the future is not a place of punishment… but a place where I finally come home to myself.

🖤I hope that anyone out there, who, like me, struggles with accepting themselves and loving themselves, can feel this truth settle gently into their bones. You are allowed to be a work in progress and a masterpiece at the same time. You are worthy of the space you take up, worthy of love, worthy of beginning again, as many times as it takes. May your future self meet you with open arms, and may you learn slowly and surely to meet yourself with the same grace. 🖤