A Gentle Reminder

by Bianca Sparacino

You are in no rush to figure out your own soul. It’s never too late to start over, it’s never too late to change your mind, it’s never too late to redirect yourself, to replace the dreams you thought you wanted for the ones that genuinely excite and challenge you.

Just try for something while

you’re here.

I hope you have the courage to stand up for that, to

open yourself to it when you start to feel it bloom

within the heart...

To never exist on the surface of your life, even if it’s easier or more convenient.

You are not afraid of being without it, because you know that you will always have yourself.

There is a resounding level of bravery to be found in being the person who believes in the light, even when they cannot see it.

You were not put into this world to fix people who do not want to be fixed.

Because at the end of the day, if someone does not meet you where you are, you cannot keep asking them to do so.

Claim it. The truth is, when you settle for an almost, you settle for almosts in every single aspect of a relationship. Almost happy. Almost valued. Almost chosen.

You deserve to be someone’s favorite thing.

someone who wants

to meet all of your hope with action. You deserve someone who isn’t afraid of being responsible for your heart.

We hold on to those who cannot love us for so many reasons, in so many ways. And it is okay. Letting go is one of the hardest things you will have to do. But at the end of the day, keeping someone in your life who makes you question yourself, who makes you feel like you are too much, who asks for you to quiet your soul — that is the greatest injustice you will ever impart on your heart. That is doing yourself a deep disservice, because you deserve to be surrounded by people who make you feel seen.

you cannot rob yourself of experience or happiness or inspiration because you are scared of how you will be perceived. You have to be unapologetic in the way that you exist here.

Be gentle with yourself.

but you can do hard things, because you show up to do them, even if it is imperfectly.

The love you deserve will love you, even when you do not deserve it.

I hope you learn how to let go of everyone’s opinion of your life.

I hope you learn how to make your time here something you are proud of.

Make your alone a beautiful place to be.

In a society that has taught us to favor being cool over being connected, promise yourself that you will always choose to be the person who cares. To be the person who does not desensitize themself, to be the person who slams their heart into the people who excite it without hesitation, without worrying if it is too much or too intense or too loud. Trust me when I say that you will never scare off the souls that will fully understand you, and nurture you, and celebrate you, by being open to this world, by being honest, by being the kind of person who loves deeply. Do not water yourself down, do not silence the parts of yourself that leap towards the beauty you see in another human being. Be all that you are. Be all that you are.

We have to forgive human beings for not knowing what they wanted, for not being at a point in their own healing or emotion to be gentle with our hearts. We have to forgive the people we have lost for leaving the way they left.

But love is also seeing something astonishing and wanting to squeeze the hand of someone beside you, someone you have given your heart to.

Choose yourself, unapologetically and without guilt — the way you choose others. Show up for yourself. Give yourself permission to hope, to care, to trust in the things you deeply crave from life. Choose letting go. Choose forgiveness, choose to turn your losses into lessons. Choose to move forward, into the kind of story that fulfills you, into the kind of person that holds your heart just as carefully as you hold theirs, into the kind of happiness that exists because you chose to fight for it, and never stop fighting for it. Never stop.

Because the truth is — they will always take up space. You don’t just forget the people who made you believe in something rare. You don’t forget the people who made you feel something special.

Choose to believe in something hopeful; choose to feel everything intensely, and do not apologize for your power, your hope, or the way you slam yourself into the human beings you meet. Choose to shout your love from rooftops, choose to share your heart with the world. Choose to fight — to be better, to heal even when it hurts, to believe with everything you hold within yourself that you have purpose here and that you belong here — that you deserve to take up space.

You met someone who did not judge you for the ways in which you had to kill your sadness, for the things you chased or sought out or broke in your past looking to understand yourself a little more, looking to salve the wounds, looking to fill the voids. You got lucky. Lucky enough to meet someone who plucked anxiety out of your chest like splinters, who poured calm into the parts of you that no one else clapped for. You got lucky enough to meet someone who was not threatened by who you were, by who you had to be to save yourself, because they knew it led you to them.

I am sorry that you lost sight of your softness for a moment in time.