what if instead of spiraling and plotting an escape, I just took a breath, looked at the sky, and said Thank you to all the lives and choices that took me to where I am?

For reasons I’m sure my therapist could tell you, I wanted to be the kind of person worth celebrating, and didn’t realize that the only thing standing in the way was my own fear of taking up that space for myself.

Because starting means imperfection. It means trying and sometimes (maybe even frequently) failing. It means sometimes re-reading your own words one day, month, year later and thinking “how in the hell did I ever think that was an acceptable sentence” and not taking that as an invitation to stop.