BeforeTimeBegan

Coffee shops are made for women like me. I have the undeniable urge to become a regular at every local café that makes a damn good cup of coffee. There is something so pure about coffee made by someone with an incredibly warm smile.

I wake up early in the mornings, I brush my yellowing teeth, and make my coffee. If I feel like it, I will take a shot of rum before I leave the house. My lipstick is from Mac, and the shade is an off brownish red. It stains my straw from the overpriced café I am a regular at. I will wear smudged brown eyeliner and worn out shoes. I love paintings of naked bodies because nudity is the earths purest form of expression. I am gorgeous even if my rituals aren't the definition of the modern-day 'clean girls' I used to try so hard to be. I am the grown woman I always dreamed of being at the end of the day.

I used to think that I didn't owe anyone anything, but along the way, and as I have aged, I have learned to think that I owe everyone everything. I do owe that baby on the street a smile, and I do owe my friends a shoulder to cry on. Why has it become so normal to no longer inconvenience ourselves for people? If I don't feel well but I have a friends birthday party, I will go to the party anyway because my friends deserve to have me support them. I will inconvenience myself in small ways for the people I love, and I will be joyous while doing so.

Opening up to people in my life feels like I am being dissected, and my insides are being poked while I am fully conscious. All I can do is stare and trust that the people in my life will show kindness instead of pure disdain. How hard can being truthful to the ones you love genuinely be?

I will never be the sickest, smallest, or hungiest in the room ever again, and that in itself is so freeing. Yes, I will eat cake by the river with my DSLR camera as the sunsets with my feet dipped in the water and my skirt a bit wet from the shore. I worked hard to love myself like this, and I will let the water know that, too.

My teeth are crooked and yellowing, and how beautiful it is to feel so uncomfortably alive. Being able to capture the sun on my acne filled face and be blessed it gives me freckles in return. What a privilege it is to grow old.

I am drinking warm milk with honey while reading manga and listening to hozier. Three years ago, I would've been drinking in a field somewhere with people I barely like.

Is life moving too fast, or am I just moving unbearably slow? Life is only beautiful because I've never gotten over anything ever.