The landslide begins as I drive into the toxic habit of comparison. I look into the faces and bodies of people who have made it big. And then I look in the mirror, and realize I do not fit the standard. I think and think and the more I do so the more I think it is a joke. A sad sick joke and I consider walking away from this scene. I tell myself I belong behind the scenes but I know it is not true. If I belonged backstage I would not have a voice so loud, a mind so wild, a soul so sensitive; I would not have a story. But, I do. Every day is a story and when I stop to read it, I realize it has so much to teach me. However, I have been so busy reading the everyday of someone else wishing it was mine. I have spent so many days in this toxic waste of a routine I forgot to read my every day. I forgot to really search within myself and discover through the layers of my own soul. When I did, I found the beauty. The beauty in a soul that cannot always be reflected in a photograph. The beauty that only gets better with age. The beauty in knowing that I am more than the beauty that is tangible. In knowing that it is okay to admit that I consider myself pretty. In knowing that I deserve to be acknowledged as more than that still. The beauty in knowing that I am strong, I am funny, I am smart, I am clever, I am free, I am passionate, I have limitless energy, I care until it hurts, I am enough. I am enough to make a mark. I start with accepting that and taking each step forward holding that truth in my heart. Doubts creep and glares make me second guess my actions, but I dive anyway. I let the adrenaline move me and the passion inspire me to continue. To keep writing when it seems easier not to. When I doubt the words will come, I type anyway and trust that the process will push me through. It does and each time it becomes easier to trust myself. It gets easier to discover more of me that I did not know was there. It helps heal wounds of the past when it seemed like they would haunt me forever. It rewrote the words that hurt me into letters of love that gave me the desire to do the same. The world is a sad place where hate has become the motive for actions and love has become but a fantasized illusion of a world we only dream of, like a possibility only available in heaven. I want to heal, to love, to care in a place that calls it weakness and a liability. So what, call me weak, a liability even, but never heartless, never morbid. I will choose to care and build people up in a scene that steps on individuals in a hunger for power, acknowledgment, or money, or whatever they deemed important enough to lose concern for humanity over. I will love selflessly in a way only true love does-until my last breath.
EL SOL Y LA FLOR 