When you’re young and in love with the world
Everything feels better than this
This moment, this season, this pain

When you’re young with the sun warming your face, and your feet covered in sand
You couldn’t know all your big, bold dreams
Would evaporate out to sea into the mist

Leaving you stranded
Wrinkled, disappointed, and bitter

Alone with self-hatred, sorrow, and dark thoughts

I was happy once
I was pretty or so it seemed
Everybody told me

I never cared much about how I looked
Maybe I should have appreciated my beauty and my feminine side
Stopped apologizing for the way I looked

Didn’t matter
I’d pay for it down the road
Bad choices became a whole lot of regret, worry lines, and age spots

I never stopped moving long enough to fall in or out of love

I was wild and impatient and itching to go whenever things got uncomfortable

A duffle bag packed by the door
Ready to hightail it to the next adventure
To start again
To forget

I forgot
Until now
When it has become impossible to outrun life
When there is no escaping yourself, your circumstances, no matter how hard you wish it

To make peace with the past and sit with the rage takes courage and stamina and strength

Because
Loving yourself
Or hating yourself
Takes up the same amount of energy

And I’m just plum worn out

So celebrate the small, still moments
The quiet victories
They’re all you get

Cuz’ your pretty only shines when you accept all of the ugly inside
All the mess, all the tears,
and all the regret

Truth is
There’s no right way to live
And there’s no easy way around it

Everybody dies
Ironically, ridiculously, and fortuitously
At the exact moment, they’ve figured out precisely how much they want to live

Everybody dies
That girl in the picture is already long gone
Dead and buried in a memory
As it should be

That’s life in black and white