Rebekah Renko

I was skinny. The two of us were the same. How do I be me when I’m not also skinny?

Naturally, my only instinctual option was to eradicate the things in my life that had brought positivity in order to maintain the negative equilibrium I had come to call normal and “right.”

It’s perplexing how fast our lives can change course, causing us to reexamine things we thought were set in stone.

A million stories will be told be about you for the rest of our lives, and the best story of them all will be that you truly lived, and that we knew you while you did.

I began to learn acceptance. The problems I have can be met with understanding and willingness to allow them into my mind without destroying me.

There’s this semi-new thing happening in our society in which we all have to “be something.” I remember, as a little girl, thinking about how one day I’d grow up to be a college student, then a wife who left her degree behind to give birth and concern herself with folding t-shirts and making chicken stir-fry.

I don’t enjoy the anxiety I feel for the state of the world, but I do have the power to stay positive and mindful in the midst of it.

She’s a girl. Has fiery red hair and freckled skin. Throws her head back when she laughs at something funny.

Criticizing others without the necessity to do so is bullying and stilts art for those you’re speaking against.

If you’re laughing while Peter Dinklage is crying, you can get the hell out of my living room.

6. Like a drug addict, you get a sinking feeling of despair and anxiety when you realize your “stash” is gone. 

I can honestly say I don’t necessarily have a personal style.

I can reflect on where I envisioned myself being as a 25-year-old, and how differently things constructed themselves to prevent those exact expectations from coming to be.

I’m recently married. Six months into my marriage, and I can already attest to the fact that change often brings with it anxiety and tension for a person struggling with their diet.

Somehow my smallness in Los Angeles made me resilient. I began to realize it was the effort of trying that made me matter. Failure to try became paramount to failure in of itself. Essentially, success was no longer mandatory, while willingness was everything.

The first time I smoked a cigarette was in jest. It happened on a humid summer night when I was a week away from leaving for my freshman year of college. I was with a childhood friend who had smoked forever and the process felt safe, almost childlike…

In four months you’ll run into each other at Target and comment on how good it is to see one another again, then one of you will say, “…Yeah, well, I gotta get back. But really, let’s get together this week. Seriously this time. I’ll text you tomorrow, promise!” You’ll probably never see this person again.