My Becoming

Listen to your favorite song on repeat, over and over, until you are absolutely repulsed by the sound of it

Get really drunk on the porch of your childhood home with two of your best friends and speak true, kind words to one another, the ones that are hard to say

Look into the eyes of the old people you love so dearly, give them your love and feel their love in return, and do not question the origin of this love, just feel it

Read a book, about half the book, find the words that you needed to hear from it, the words that you were searching for in the first place, then find a new one

Kiss the cute boy that you know will never adore you as much as you adore him, and know this truth and be okay with it, but still kiss

Visit your dead father’s grave and lay and cry beside it as you watch the clouds, knowing his presence surrounds you, somehow, in some beautifully mysterious way

Dance, do not stop dancing, do not stop singing to yourself alone in your bedroom, and never turn the music down, only louder

Love God fully, not quite knowing how and why you love this God you feel so near to you, but love wholeheartedly, nonetheless

Sit on that beat-up lawn chair that you’ve so often sat before, and stare into the backyard, mind endlessly drifting, rejuvenating

Look at your teeny tiny dog, this small, gently creature, and know that it has a soul, and it holds some sort of truth that is overlooked by humans, which may be the simple truth of absolute loyalty

Fall madly in love with almost all people, with no explanation why, other than you just really, really like who they are

Hold your best friends hand during hard moments in your life, wordless, but saying so much, like how much you appreciate all the years of friendship and laughter and love

Write these absurd and true thoughts in your journal that maybe only make sense to you, but realize that this is okay, because they help you explain the world

Sit in the local coffee shop and watch boys, and wonder about boys and the kind of boys you like, and if you even like boys enough to potentially love one for the rest of your life

Cry over things and people that were lost until you’re left with absolute desperation that’s oddly infused with this peculiar feeling of hope and love that only accompanies brokenness

Observe modern art and realize that you indeed do not like modern art as much as you’d like to like to, because it’s what all the hip and misunderstood people like, just keep disliking it

Wear clothes that make you feel happy, style your hair in ways that express how you feel, and never, ever, stop standing in the mirror quoting Sylvia Plath, “…wondering always who am I? Who is this girl I hear talking?”

Live by the words of people that have once lived, or still live, these inspirational, heartbreaking, lovely words that you tape in your room, in your car and feel understood when you read them

Unceasingly strive to know yourself deeper, to be kinder, to feel alive and well and destroyed and in despair and beautiful and broken and whole and everything in between

And never stop being who you are.

This is what I would tell my twenty-year old self.

This is my becoming.