I used to think of myself as a half-completed blueprint,
lines smudged, curling in at the corners,
waiting for someone else's hands to fill in the gaps,
to retrace the lines and help me become legible.
But I've learned to love the asymmetry,
the way my edges don't always quite align,
how my laughter spills too loud into a quiet room,
how my mind never stays in one place for too long.
Some mornings, I meet my reflection like an old friend,
other days, like a stranger I'm not ready to forgive,
Both are a part of me,
and both are finally welcome to stay.
The best version of me is unpolished,
She's learning, still full of flaws.
She holds space for every past self-
the one crying at red lights,
the one who has said yes every time she should have said no,
the one who doubts her own mind-
and thanks them for surviving.
I've stopped pruning my wildness for the sake of fitting in,
stopped whispering apologies into the air,
for the weight of my dreams.
Growth is loud,
messy,
unapologetic.
It echoes through quiet places,
it's the constant opportunity to hold yourself,
and feel the hum of truth beneath your skin.
Pride doesn't come as a parade.
It arrives in small, undetectable moments-
saying, "I don't need to explain myself,"
cutting your hair short despite mom's protests,
wearing the color I used to hate,
just to see if it could love me back,
standing in the sunlight
without apologizing for taking up space.
There’s no instruction manual for this-
no “how-to” for living with the voice in your head
that says you’ll never be enough
or the one that whispers
you’re already too much.
So I started small.
Who I am now is not the final draft,
and maybe that's the point.
We're all a work in progress,
and progress looks like this:
showing up exactly as you are,
and letting the world learn to adjust its lens.