I Belong Deeply to Myself

by Dallas Taylor

When I finally decided I deserved to know Joy, I was surprised to find so much of myself in her.

I 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.

The people who set you on fire deserve to know how brightly they burn.

Ultimately, the character I’d written for him put his real character to shame. He ran off with his tail between his legs, and I had to admit the real reason I had spent so much time writing his story was because I was too scared to write my own.

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

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 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.

My hands still know how to hold, but they rest in fists.

do not pretend to love me if you have no intention of meaning it.

I will never love someone the way I loved you—hopelessly, powerlessly, foolishly—because I care far too much about the girl within me who once gave away her light as decorations for an altar.

You may never stop loving them. You may wake up ten years from now and still hold them in your heart with tenderness. You may still find them beautiful and you might even miss their laugh, but do you want to know a beautiful, happy, marvelous secret? Love doesn’t have to hurt. It doesn’t have to remain as this ache within you, yearning and burning for them. It will not always be painful. One day, you’re going to wake up and the spite will be gone. Don’t mistake this for redemption, it’s not. Don’t call them thinking you were wrong to have hurt when they hurt you. The spite will be gone and it will give way to understanding—if not for them, then for yourself. The love that once ached within you will be replaced by a quiet fondness, a gentle remembrance between friends. The mark of the way you loved will linger, but it will not always be an open wound.

It’s the moment when you understand the person was never going to treat you with more intention, magically wake up one day and know they were wrong, or decide you deserved better.

I'm sure he misses the things I did for him, but he had no idea who I was outside of the version that existed to please him.

Let it wash over you, then let it wash out.

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

I invite people in before my home is fully furnished, eating dinners with them out of takeout boxes on my floor, honestly telling them why there is no couch or boyfriend with a smile,“I just haven’t found one I really like.” We laugh in my kitchen and talk candidly about how hopeful and hopeless we are all at once.

I do whatever the hell I like because I can.

I gave myself permission to fall in love even if it meant being heartbroken later, to quit jobs even if it meant not having a plan for a while.

Stop spending so much time thinking about who loves you and start spending it on what you love to do. The who will show up among the what.

Healing isn’t linear, it’s an ever-evolving skill we cultivate in different forms.

What a gift it is to keep growing.

What if, possibly, this is the time where you learn how to breathe deeply in the face of fear?

Love is your birthright. You need not earn it.

I deserve a love I don’t have to make excuses for.

People start to notice when you’ve found peace within yourself. They can’t quite put their finger on it, but there’s something enigmatic about you. You are quiet, but still demand to be heard. You’re not fighting, but you’re assertive. That’s because there is a magnetism associated with the gentle knowing of who you are by no one else’s standards but your own. When you decide you belong deeply to yourself, you gain an unshakable foundation beneath your feet, rooted wherever you go, with new growth and branches constantly emerging up above you without a second thought. Growth is no longer something you try to do, it’s just something that happens as if it always has, because in reality, it always was.

I believe in my own goodness because I have watched it go to bat with my bad and win, time and time again.

I have a date at 7:30 with someone who makes me laugh. She adores me. She is beautiful. She is me.