"Growing Into" Me

There are people I want to hurt. The people I feel genuinely deserve an uppercut to the jaw after all the sorrow and agony that they put me through, and put others through. The people that I wish felt what it was like to have your heart turned inside out or shattered into a million pieces left and right, that caused me to scramble to pick up the shards of the ones I love while I was still picking up my own. The people that don’t deserve a fraction of time to spin across my thoughts, but that I dedicate all-nighters to anyway solely because I can’t help myself.

Yes, there are people that I absolutely despise that have taken their toll on me. A toll that I am embarrassed to admit is true and my reality. It makes me feel small, about two feet tall at the very most, because I’m wasting away a beautiful portion of my life belittling myself. Belittling, belittling, belittling and belittling again. I can’t stop doing it. It’s a part of my daily routine more than anything else is. I grieve, I mourn, I hurt, I miss, I fail, I hit the verge of giving up, and I do it all again tomorrow, and the next day and the next. A tiresome loop of events.

But I’m not going to put myself through this forever. I want to make a change, or an impact so great that it touches hearts and touches souls. I strive to make a change in fact, because I know deep down, even if I forget sometimes, that I’m worth more than this. I’m better than the people that push me from side to side. I’m stronger than the ones that leap at the chance to live in my mind rent free and pollute it with their harmful, deteriorating smoke. I’m determined to escape the bonds that hold me down and the fire that explodes in my skull. I’m capable of much more than where I am right now.

I’m living the period of my life that I will one day refer to as “roots that I so deeply remember” when the future comes. When I let myself healthily grow into my goals, like the shoes my mom bought too big for me when I was little. I’m going to prepare myself for that. After all, don’t they say you can’t reach the heights you wish to if you don’t believe you’re capable of it first? Don’t they say every action starts with a thought?

I vow to go into 2022 with a newfound grace, elegance, passion and desire that burns inside my stomach and engraves into my brain. That means that I will hurt people, and I won’t back down from it. The ones that did me wrong, and the ones that did me right, I’m going to hurt them all exactly the same, but that’s not it. I’m going to make them laugh. I’m going to make them cry. I’m going to make them scared – so afraid that they begin to tremble. I’m going to give them reason for excitement, reason for doom, reason for disappointment. I’m going to do it all, when they’re sitting at the edge of their seats peering into their television screen, or when they’re holding a book with my pen name on the cover.

Someday, someday, someday.

And that all starts with the effort I put into it now. I’m not going to spend my nights feeling sorry for myself anymore. I’ll be busy, working to put myself through college, but I’m not willing to waste a second of any opportunities that may befall me. When the darkness comes and the world outside gets colder in the winter months, I’m going to provide myself the warmth that comes with not following, but chasing your dream. The people that treated me right and the people that treated me wrong are not the things that I will give my instinctual all to worry about. I’m meant to worry about myself and the pathway I’ve hoped to follow since I was seven years old. In the soft comforts of my bed, there will be no more tears, but a reconciliation with the soft, innocent, naive pieces of myself, and from the hardships and the celebrations within, I’ll create a story that the entire world needs to hear that started from the journals of my late night thoughts, that for a while never left the perimeters of my bedroom.

I’ve been telling myself we can find inspiration anywhere and anytime, and I’ve come to cease the moment and take advantage of what I have.

Every night I’ll tell myself a story. In my reassurance, I wish the world to thrive. To feel okay again. To have a moment to escape.

I want to change the world because it's the world both bad and good that changed me. I dedicate the starlit skies to the energies I have for making it there. I'm excited to look back on these days with a proud sparkle in my eye, for choosing to be nicer to myself.

Here's my toast to 2022.