528 -X026

After going through everything that I have been through, I have still managed to achieve genuine happiness. That is the kind of strength that I no longer feel ashamed of. I am not defined by what I have been through. I am defined by who I am.

And who I am is just a girl born into a family of seven, with brothers and sisters she is trying to get to know, and parents whom I have fully forgiven while having no interest in forming a bond with them, all while grieving my childhood.

The one I didn't get to have.

I spent the last couple of months consoling my grief and properly letting that part of myself go, and it is the prettiest yet ugliest I have ever seen myself. Hearing sounds come out of me that I didn't know the human body was capable of producing, and feeling peace and lightness in the holes those pieces left behind.

I began to remember things exactly as they happened instead of how the story was repeatedly told around me. I began to let the pain and the happiness exist in the same room, letting them stare at each other through a mirror where they both recognized themselves in a face that did not belong to them.

I sat there and watched myself go through the pain as I have a thousand times before, but this time I knew for certain that everything was going to be alright.

And the pieces of me that I was shedding—I wasn't losing them. I was repurposing them.

And the holes they leave inside will soon be filled with flowers of my choosing, and one day all of this hurt will simply be a well that I draw from from time to time to inspire the beautiful life I created for myself.

And because of that, now more than ever, I find the strength to cry. I find the love to look at the bags under my eyes and know that I am closer to eternal bliss than I have ever been, regardless of the thunder and lightning outside.

I will walk barefoot on the wet grass and stare at the moon, and she will come down and wrap me in her beautiful glow.

I will stand under the apple tree and look below.

And I will know that the monsters I buried on this day do not scare me.