I am beautiful.

"The truth is, you have to wake up everyday and tell yourself you're beautiful. It's just something you do. No one actually opens their eyes in the morning believing that they're gorgeous. It takes time. Painstakingly fragile time. Just a small moment at the beginning of your day. Let it hold hands with the sun. Let it become a ritual for you. Just tell yourself every morning, I am beautiful. You don't even have to believe it at first. But after a day, a week, a year, ten years, you will wake up and say it, and you will believe it. I am beautiful."

I dug this up the other day. It was from some little piece that never got finished. Of course. I am in the habit of not finishing things. I liked this one though. It was mostly about femininity and womanhood. It was about courage too. And faith.
All of those things have been on my mind lately.

Decisions are coming to a head in my life. The choices that change things in larger ways than most.
And some of it's easy. There is a portion of me that is wrapped tight inside of my chest and rests with a slow breathing. It's a part that I can't choose now because a key piece is missing. So it waits. Sometimes restlessly impatient, and at other times just simply waiting.
But then there's other decisions. Larger portions of myself bursting at the seams. They whisper to me at night, and their whispers are so loud that sometimes they wake me. Tiny voices growing bigger about cameras and languages and food and quilts and places and film and writing.
I won't lie. The voice in my head that whispers to me about writing has reached a crescendo. It is screaming about books that you can hold in the palm of your hand and title pages and covers covered in tiny blue flowers and hand-painted illustrations and words. It is screaming about finishing.

Something big is going to happen soon. I know it.

Matthew is my solace these days. Especially the later chapters.