If You Tell a Lie

by Lucinda Berry

You couldn’t stay stuck in trauma forever. That’s what my mom made me promise when she died: “Don’t you dare use this as a reason to throw your life away,

I shot my inner child a long time ago, along with the white horse she was waiting for someone to come riding in on to save her.

The best way to live your life was to learn to love yourself—really, truly love yourself—and accept yourself exactly as you were.

I’d lived with suicidal hate for so long that the moment I tasted what it felt like to have an ounce of love for myself, I chased that shit like it was heroin. I’d never stopped.

Do you know how freeing it was to live in a world where you didn’t give a fuck what people thought about you? Especially as a woman? There’s no better feeling on the planet. At least I haven’t found one yet.

the world was finally beginning to change. Slowly realizing that there wasn’t just one type of body that’s attractive or healthy. We’d been let out of our cages, and we weren’t going back in. You couldn’t make us.

nobody had really done anything spectacular with their life except me. What a surprise. All the child prodigies that everyone thought were destined for greatness were mostly mediocre.

we had to be so selective with the words we used because our words have power.

People always thought that I had this strict moral code because it was connected to some kind of God, but that wasn’t it at all. Rules created order, and I needed order; otherwise the world didn’t make sense to me. Rules made sense.

We all had our secrets. That’s one thing I knew for sure about life. What we looked like and how we represented ourselves on the outside were often two entirely different things.

There are parts of yourself that you hide from others, especially the ones that are dark.

Do you know how much work it takes to pretend like you’re fine every day? To be the sunshine when you’re really the darkness?