#musicalmind

She loves streetlights and starry nights, bare feet in the summer grass, piano chords and guitar strums, and just about anything with sugar in it. She loves to belt her favorite musicals with the volume up and the windows down. She drinks tea and sips coffee, but she really loves hot chocolate with a sprinkle of cinnamon when she’s had a bad day. Books are her favorite way to travel, and you will rarely find her without a book or pen in hand. Her painted fingers are part nail polish and part smudges from painting with oils and acrylics. She giggles at terrible puns, and she watches horror movies with the lights on. She’ll beat you at a game of chess, but then she will insist to play again, and if she likes you, she’ll let you win. She has to stop to pet every dog she passes, and she will always beg you to let her have one. She has good days and bad days. The good days are magical, but the bad days, they sneak out of nowhere and they threaten the light in her dark brown eyes. She can be a handful, sometimes more. She nags and she panics, she over-analyzes everything. She loves parties, but she likes to stay to the side, casually absorbing everything around her without being in the center of the room. She will be the biggest pain you have ever encountered when she is anxious or depressed, but she will love you like you’ve never been loved before. Her quirks are how she gets through every day, constantly battling the monsters in her head. It will never be fair to you because these monsters require her extra attention. Her mental illness is like a cancer, and you can’t date her without dating her mental illness, too. But I promise you, she is worth it. Every night you spend dancing in the kitchen with her, every frosting-coated kiss, and every I love you will be worth it. I promise.

Once you openly hate yourself - to the point that it is physically noticeable - people tell you not to be so hard on yourself. But when you like yourself, people tear  you down until you don’t like yourself anymore. Your clothes are wrong, your body too round, your singing wrong, your thoughts stupid, your happiness weird. Slowly, you get talked down and judged enough that you don’t feel like enough anymore. Then, the hatred begins. You start to dislike yourself. You put in hours at the gym. You finally work up a song. Then, people look at you strange, laugh at you. Don’t pay attention to them, others tell you. But the stares are cutting, the words sharp. Your spirit can only survive so much battery. So you begin to loathe yourself, a hatred so deep that it summons its own word. Then, the pity begins. Don’t look down on yourself. Don’t listen to others. Just be yourself, and be happy. But how can you? The cycle will only begin again...