It has been a long time since I could look at myself and see a beautiful person. There is this odd block that comes out and hides it from me. Or I hide it from myself. Like most people I have moments where I feel like I look fat, where I realize that I've been snapping at someone when i should have walked away, when I look in a mirror and fight to see something that is left of the person that I want to be.
I've never been a person to buy into the whole pretty girls syndrome where my nails had to be done, my hair had to be perfect, and I actually cared if I looked fat in my jeans.
I have however always been that woman who took pride in being nice to people, giving of myself because I wanted to, and being defined by how smart I was, what books I read, and how much I was capable of loving.
I look at those things now and I still believe them to be important but as I grow older I've started caring a bit more about how I look, because looking (and being) healthy isn't as easy as it might have been ten years ago.
This is an exceptable things, if I didn't want to be perfect, and ok, and not a sick person.
I love environments where no one knows my past and hate environments where it comes up and I have to share the story.
In the beginning I was proud that I was a survivor, that I had made it, that I was living life like a normal person, that I had beat death!
Now sometimes it's just exhausting to be the poster child for double organ transplant patients. Don't get me wrong I am proud. But I don't want that to be the newest way that I've found to identify myself. I would love at this point not to be brave, but to be smart or even hot. There's less pressure.
I remember being so not worried about looks, or health, or intelligence in my early twenties, being outspoken and passionate, and in you face.
After surgery I did a 180. I became low-key, and passive, and the "sure, whatever you want" girl. If that were my natural state of being then it wouldn't even be worth discussion. But I'm not.
I'm a doer. I'm a firery, passionate, compassionate. loving, I care too much not to say what I feel and think kinda girl.
And I think that I've been lost, and not myself for a very long time. I want me back, and I'm no longer overly concerned as to whether you, or Joe Schmoe, or the neighbor, or the people at work, or the little old lady down the street think that I'm beautiful.
I want to grow into a beautiful being that keeps creating, and loving, and living, and hugging, and giving myself out to anyone who wants to come along for the ride. I want to not worry about who I was or who I will be but only focus on who I am, and see her as the beautiful creature that she is in the moment. Flaws and all.
I think that woman would be really beautiful.
