I Belong Deeply to Myself

by Dallas Taylor

“What is enough, Fear?” It had no answer for me, and I realized it never would, for Love would be the one to teach me that.

Love and Humility. They’ve taught me the coolest girls are the ones who aren’t afraid to look a little silly in the pursuit of a life well-lived.

think I’m the kind of person who will always remember and who will always care. Maybe it’s my curse or maybe, it’s my gift.

Tell people you love them. Tell them that you’re proud of them. Tell them you believe in them. Especially the people you think don’t need to hear it. Say it again when they brush you off, or when they turn away from you in a way that lets you know it’s been far too long since they’ve heard it. Say it until they look you in the eyes and know you mean it. The people who set you on fire deserve to know how brightly they burn.

You once told me I was an earthquake of a human being whose presence filled up every room. I think for a moment, my power didn’t scare you because you thought you could confine it in your hands and make it yours. But this force within me has always been mine, and mine alone. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the magic mirror to reflect you twice your size. It’s not in my nature, you said it yourself.

Before I called him my third heartbreak, I called him first thing in the morning.

Pretty, lifeless, drunk proclamations are not love. “Maybe,” is not love. Love is respect, and respect doesn’t leave you guessing. Respect doesn’t make you wait up at night, terrified they’ve found someone they like better at a party. Respect doesn’t take back the drunk words they told you with their hands on your thighs. Respect shows up. Respect listens. When he finally decided to show me some decency and leave me, I realized what was possibly the most painful part of it all; The respect I had been starved of had mostly been my own.

I set myself on fire trying to keep him warm, then had the nerve to act surprised when I found myself burned.

I had to find my own exit route just like he had to find his own solid ground.

But you aren’t a home and I’m not a child, and to put it plainly, I’m proud. I’m proud because even though we were just ships passing in the night, each of us made it out to sea. Even if it couldn’t be together. I wish you gentle waters.

I realized then that someone who never considered me when we were together wasn’t going to do it in my absence. I sent my need for revenge an eviction notice and watched as people flooded into the space you once occupied—friends who remember my birthday and listen when I’m talking. A lover who opens my doors, even when it’s to leave him. People who treat me like I treated you.

Though I’ll never let the world harden me, or allow myself to be closed off from love, light, or pain, there is a grit in my softness.

because I care far too much about the girl within me who once gave away her light as decorations for an altar.

That is real closure; to see someone had every chance to care about you, to show up for you and make their feelings known, and didn’t. For me, the second death signifies a chapter closed, and frees me from the need to write alternate endings in my head.

A world shattered when you left—the one I had built around you.

When the tears subsided, and the wounds healed, I remembered who the architect had been. Then, I started building again. This time, around myself.

Sometimes, people will find better. Not better than you, but better for them. The good news is, you will, too.

When we stop viewing life as a laundry list of things we have to accomplish, and rather as a collection of experiences we get to have, we give ourselves permission to sit back and enjoy the ride. I had been treating my life like a test I was desperate to pass, determined to control every outcome in my favor. Instead, I started treating my life like a concert. I don’t tell the band what to play, I just show up, listen, enjoy myself, and try to meet a few people along the way who like the same kind of music I do.

Nostalgia is a beautiful liar. She whispers about our past in seductive tones that beckon us backwards, promising more desirable outcomes in her heavenly hindsight. When you find yourself being lured by her sweet familiarity, be grateful you have had a life full of people, places, and times worth missing, but remember there is more. You are meant to live a big, beautiful life. There are more people you will love, more places that will take your breath away, and more times you will surely miss. Nostalgia paints a pretty picture of the past, but she, at best, only tells half-truths. The whole truth is right here, right now in the present, which is where we’ll find something much more beautiful than nostalgia: the incredible, fleeting gift of being alive.

every risk, every failure, every tear-stained night—was now an experience in my tool box I could use to create a really beautiful life that felt like it belonged to me and no one else. I plan on fucking up a lot more, because as I now know, fuck ups are capital. They’re the currency with which we obtain the incredibly valuable resource of life experience.

When we were small, we struggled through our first steps. Now, we walk, run, and dance without giving those first shaky steps a second thought. Healing is like that. You will fall down. You will sometimes regress back to a crawl when your legs feel shaky and crawling feels safer. You’ll want to retreat back into the arms of ex-lovers who may not appreciate you but whose arms feel familiar. You’ll doubt yourself until one day, you don’t. You’ll just be healed, as if you always were. Then, you’ll find new wounds to tackle just like you found bike riding and ballet. Healing isn’t linear, it’s an ever-evolving skill we cultivate in different forms.

Find people who watch you stumble and admire the grace with which you rise again. The people who treat us as if we are extraordinary at our kitchen tables far before we arrive at mountain tops or podiums are the ones who are meant to be beside us—because in truth, we are.

When you date and break up, or have a falling out with a friend, the only window you’re supposed to have into their lives is the memory of the life you shared together. It isn’t healthy to keep tabs on the ghosts that haunt our daydreams or the menaces that bring us melancholy.

The women I am fortunate enough to call friends have watched me fuck up and then helped me laugh about it later. They have forgiven me for the mistakes I have made while becoming. You see, it has always been women who have held my hair and fixed it into a braid so even my lowest moments could feel beautiful in some way. They danced with me down broken roads and made me who I am. So when I say, “I am just like other girls,” I am proud. I am a mosaic of the women who have lent me some of their light. Light I would not have found my way without.

I have seen what love can do because it was love who picked me up and put my broken pieces back together. It was love who let me cry on her shoulder and hold her hand when I was weak. Love stood by me and propped me up when I had mistaken the impostors of lust, longing, deceit and betrayal for her. Love was in the eyes of my friends who watched me cry and felt my pain in the pit of their stomachs. It was in the hands of their babies who grabbed my finger and reminded me that love is innocent, pure, and simple. Love is not my enemy, she is the means by which I survived, and I will always believe in her.

I used to curse my sensitivity. I was afraid it would overwhelm people. I thought of it as my Achilles’ heel, a wound I must keep hidden so as not to appear weak to my opponents. Though, as I’ve healed, I’ve realized my sensitivity is what makes me intuitive, empathetic, warm, and connective. It is the superpower that helps me find my people—the ones who meet me with eyes, arms, and hearts wide open.

This love I’ve found, it’s evergreen. It’s endless and it’s patient. It sees me through my dark times and it holds my hand when things get scary. It’s an early Sunday morning with pancakes and coffee just because, and it never lies because we have no secrets. It’s honest when it needs to be, but it’s never harsh or judgmental. This love is slow and steady and I know that no matter what, at the end of the day, we’ll be okay. This love I’ve found is timeless and peaceful, a homecoming after a long time away where your room looks the same but you suddenly have a newfound fondness for t...

Now, I view relationships less as gift giving and more as a potluck. Sometimes you bring an entree and your friend brings the wine. Other times you’ll bring dessert and they’ll handle the main course. You take turns bringing more to the table. Everybody eats.

The space where we find gratitude and ambition side by side is a special, happy place called fulfillment.

I am cringe. I am crazy. I laugh too loudly and trip over my feet. On my best days I’m a mess of dark hair, big love, and a sharp wit. On my worst I’m unfair, harsh, and too quick to speak or judge. But on both days, I am trying. I am laughing at myself. I am holding myself accountable (even if it’s in retrospect). I am admitting when I’m hurt, scared, happy, or hopeful. I am learning how to love things that are good for me, leave things that aren’t, and how to tell the difference between the two. I am deciding that actually, I am enough and there is time. I am trying, and I am failing. On both days, I am getting better.

But sometimes, the point of loss is to lose. Sometimes, the point of pain is to hurt. Your emotions don’t have to serve a higher purpose to be important.You deserve to feel, not for what you’ll learn from it, but because you are human.

Her goodness is not rooted in the absence of bad; it comes from the fact that, though she is capable of bad things, she continues to choose goodness wherever she can. I believe in my own goodness because I have watched it go to bat with my bad and win, time and time again.

You will grow in stillness too, flowers begin at the root. Rest is an oath to ourselves we must keep, and the art of slowness has much to teach. Real love is sometimes yes, and sometimes no, other times it is letting go.