People Change You And Sometimes That Is The Worst Thing In The Entire World Because You Used To Like

people change you and sometimes that is the worst thing in the entire world because you used to like yourself a little more but now you hate the flinch that lives in your shoulderblades and you overthink every moment and you never set a boundary without feeling internally destroyed and it fucking sucks because they shouldn't get to do that, they already ruined your life the once, it shouldn't echo into the future

but also people change you and sometimes that is the softest morning and the best surprise. realizing that you can divide things into perfect thirds without trying because you were a sibling in a group of 3 and always needed to measure out things. you learned to skip rope and step around cracks from the kid down the street. you love the way your favorite english teacher influenced your writing.

you're old enough these days to know your mother was right and you should take a coat just in case it gets cold but you are still too young to have outrun the thunderstorm of your childhood. you arrange your spoons the way you learned growing up but you've since reorganized the rest of your kitchen to make sense to you and the way that you like working. you fold your clothes actually still based on the marie kondo method (you just like the habit of it) but you allow yourself to just-loosely-chuck-some-of-it-in because really who has the fuckin' time for it.

you still can't be in the room while people look at your art (some kind of weird mix of guilt, shame, and embarrassment) but you picked up certain words and phrases from friends that help you slow down and treat yourself a little bit gentle with it. you always take other people's crafts with a reverence like praying, but you can't help that when you see your own work from a few years ago, you mirror someone else's snort of disdain. you saw other people's bodies and freckles and stretch marks and scars and you realized they are all still fucking beautiful to you, almost obscenely so, because they belong to someone you care for so deeply that it blocks out the sun - but you can't help the little flash of self-judgement whenever you pass a mirror; the voice from too-many years of 90's and 00's skinny-means-you've-won.

and it's kind of funny because you meet someone new and while they're making friends with you, you get to see these little stories playing out of them. you meet your mom and you think oh that's where they get the accent and you meet their college roommate and you think that's the same joke you both make and you meet their friend and you think ah so this is explains the oddly vast knowledge of freshwater lakes

and then one day in the mirror you reach your hand up to push back your hair and you think - oh shit, that was them. or you make a comment and you think ah, stole that from someone else. or you stand in the store and get that random flash of they would totally tell me to buy this. and it is like a little strange river to bind you to them - that over all this time and space, their hands guide your hands and your heart in silence. it is good and it is bad and is so precious and so horrible. it is both proof of love on this earth and it is also the thing that is keeping you hurt.

a little promise that is probably true: somewhere out there, your hands are ever-so-often guiding them too.