This Is How You Learn To Accept

There’s something to be said for the flow of a river, spilling and surging, however it may choose.

I’ve learned this year, that above all else, I’d like to exist in that way.

To navigate without force.

To ebb and to flow.

To release the grips I’ve placed on things I think I “need” in order to be more of myself.

Who even is that girl, anyway?

I’d like to welcome change.

To face it with a rush of buoyancy and courage.

To know that fighting the current is a war I’ll never win.

But I think I’ve always been more of a rock.

Opposing what is, in static pursuit of what was.

Weathering reality with every inch of who I am,

believing that the only way to exist is through force.

Today though, I can no longer be that rock,

Resisting the stream as it moves.

Because no matter how I try,

The change surrounds me, regardless.

It goes about its path, either way.

The river is alive.

It breathes and moves and feels.

It denies stagnancy at every turn.

And I think maybe, this is what it means to accept.

To accept that life isn’t always the pretty picture I want it to be.

And in this moment, neither am I.

You don’t stop or breakdown or run,

you move with it.

You acknowledge that there is no secret key or magic code to figuring it all out.

Who you are.

What you need.

Or what, above all else, will bring you to that elusive place we call “happiness.”

Because it’s all bullshit really.

That’s how you accept.

You start by seeing it for what it is.

By acknowledging the fallacy of everything your 15-year-old self imagined to be true about the world.

You’re not a woman made to be silenced or dimmed or defeated.

You are meant to be heard, and felt and feared.

You are meant to flow.

You accept by admitting that you can’t have the light without the dark.

Or the ups without the downs.

No one can.

You accept by acknowledging.

By recognizing that stagnancy and stability are certainly not one in the same.

And that it’s you’re humanity not your sex that necessitates range.

Range in emotion

Range in fear

Range in the ebbs and flows of everything.

Because you are your own way home.

Not just the good parts.

Not just the things you curate for everyone else to see.

The you unraveling on the floor, with tears streaming down, in fear of an invisible monster.

That you is the path.

The one you are so innately scared of owning- in fear they may see right through you. Right past the vulnerability to the shame.

Because shame is far less attractive, isn’t it?

Seeing that you in all of her broken parts

In all of her glorious uncertainty,

That is acceptance.

That is the river.

And loving her, I’m starting to think, is how you become it.