“I have had this weird sensation in the bottom of my stomach for the past few days. Something had been putting me in a funk. I couldn’t get comfy under my quilt, my eyes were constantly burning, and no food felt nourishing. The weird thing is…I knew it wasn’t that fact that you were gone. I always knew that was coming. So why was I up even later than normal, greeting the sunrise with a questioning look? Then, out of nowhere, I realized something. It wasn’t you I was missing. For the first time in my life I didn’t have a love interest. In anything. A boy, a place, a good book. For the longest time I had kept giving parts of myself away to things, giving myself to people. All the sudden it felt like a  a pillow case had been pulled off my head just at the brink of  my own suffocation. It all became so clear.

“I am going to fall in love with myself.”

I want to fall deeply and passionately in love with each bit of me. I want to write sonnets about my knobby knees and crooked pinkie finger. I don’t want to hide my stomach or the scar on my cheek anymore. I want to be okay with my abandonment issues, my poor grammar, and my medium pants. I want to become engrossed in every horrible, gorgeous little fragment. All of my being. I can’t thank you enough for showing me this. I can’t thank you enough for making my heart ache.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. “

-B.E.Fitzgerald