Open Book

by Jessica Simpson

Still, I was present. I kept a promise I made to myself a little over a year before to show up in my own life. To feel things, whether they were the result of bad memories, or good ones in the making.

There are so many firsts to raising kids, and parents are told to catch them all. But they don’t warn you about the lasts. The last baby onesie. The last time you tie their shoes. The last time they think you have every answer in the world.

To walk forward through my anxiety, I first had to look back to understand what pain I was running from, and what I was trying to hide.

It is so easy to notice things about people and tell them. I don’t know why people don’t just give out compliments every single day.

I underlined a passage in chapter 29 of my paperback copy: “I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”

Teen assassins in Wet Seal.

“Love is not enough,” I said. “If love was enough, I would stay forever. But it isn’t enough. We have to like each other. We have to be friends.”

What if, all this time, our “problem areas” were not our stomachs or thighs but our brains? I’m not saying people aren’t cruel—believe me, I know—but we can’t allow ourselves to do the work for bullies. Give a girl an insult, she’ll feel bad for a day, but teach her to hate her body, she’ll feel bad forever.

If I think about it, I can really start to hurt about past relationships. I can go there so easily, because I gave so much of my time and my self to these guys. You feel like you need some return on that investment, but sometimes it’s just personal growth.

It was so odd, this feeling that someone who has been part of you for nine months is now next to you in a bassinet.