I Belong Deeply to Myself

by Dallas Taylor

I took my shame and sent it down the river as an offering to the God I’d been taught to fear. As I watched it float away toward Babylon, I realized both of us were finally homeward bound.

“We’ll always do worse before we know better.” Guilt goes to bed hungry.

We don’t notice she’s gone until those parts of ourselves we had tucked away seem less looming, and suddenly we realize that Grief was, in fact, a friend. She was always rooting for us, and she forced us to fall in love with our shadows.

When we attempt to ignore Grief like a storm outside, we forgo the opportunity to be drenched in the reminders of how deeply we have loved.

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

Then, I learned some artists won’t paint you as you are, they’ll paint you as they wish you to be.

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. I’m meant to shake people to their core.

People who love us deeply can hurt us immensely.

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

I often wonder when the last day of my childhood was.

I didn’t realize it was gone until the first time I heard “Landslide” and understood it wasn’t really about a mountain. I wish I could go back and tell my little self to hang on tightly to her imaginary world instead of burying it. It would have saved me a lot of digging.

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.

I stopped waiting for the next benchmark to bring my life meaning.

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.

What if you started making choices based on what felt authentic to you, rather than what you feel you’re supposed to choose?

It isn’t healthy to keep tabs on the ghosts that haunt our daydreams or the menaces that bring us melancholy.

The kindest thing we can do for ourselves and others is be honest about the way we feel, and then allow them to do the same.

I am deciding that actually, I am enough and there is time.