Begin Again

by Emma Lord

that at our cores we’re all more alike than we think. Hung up on the same worries, wishing on the same stars.

at ease in its warmth, but uneasy with something else—at the feeling of being taken care of, when so often I’m determined to be the one who takes care.

An even longer time since I hugged anybody and felt this kind of mutual understanding in it—that sometimes words might not fix things, but this can make them hurt less.

But people who only like to do stuff they’re already great at? They end up limiting themselves. And they end up regretting it.”

‘Anything worth doing starts with a mess.’”

“Like—getting a new start doesn’t mean you have to wipe the slate clean. Just pick up the pieces. Begin again.”

I think when it comes to grief, the more you can process it together, the easier it’ll probably be to heal.”

“I think the only difference is whether you’re willing to acknowledge it. And sometimes I think your whole obsession with fixing things is you not acknowledging it.”

Because the truth is, knowing I can be helpful means that I’m not a burden.

When you get used to living a certain way—used to measuring your life, and maybe even your worth in a certain way—it’s so much easier to keep going in an old rhythm than to try to pick up one you’ve never known.

I want to love and be loved without ever having to wonder if it’s conditional. I want a life that is sometimes just my own, without feeling like I’m responsible for anyone or anyone is burdened with being responsible for me. I want back what I lost—at least however much of it I can still get.

It’s everything I’ve been trying to do, and everything I want to instill in the advice I give from now on—not starting over, but starting with what you’ve got.

Love. Not loved. I can’t make it go away, can’t shake an entire lifetime of love from under my skin; even trying to see as far into the future as I can let myself in this moment, I’m not sure if I ever will.

With the strange way you have to rearrange yourself when you can’t make the love you have for someone go away, but have to wait for it to take a new shape.

How do you quit an entire person? How do you give up on someone who has defined almost every version of love you know?

The kind of moment that forms a tattoo in your heart before you even fully understand how much it means to you, living in it and outside it at the same time, making it a part of your story before you know how the story ends.

Maybe it’s not so scary now that I’m starting to recognize that families take shapes of their own, and I’m lucky to have more than one.

“The difference is how you use that power. Whether you use it to undermine or support.”

But whatever happens next, we’ll always have this—the kind of moment that proves magic isn’t just for pages in a story, but something you can find all on your own.

But if I’ve learned anything this semester, it’s that sometimes you have to chuck the plans out the window.

Now that I’ve started to deal with that fear and rely on the experience under my belt, I understand those goals I made weren’t meant to be a road map.

Forget the compass. Let’s go on an adventure.