I'm flipping through the photo book that i've kept in my head. I can see me as a young girl with fantasies that spread like wild fire. I can see yesterday and tell you how unimportant it was that I was laying down on someone else's bed eating a churro.


All of these pictures have small tiny captions and colorful stickers and cliche sayings surrounding them. I always lose count when i try to remember how many mental pictures I've saved along the road that I call my life and my education and my birth.


I wanna tell you the story of each and every picture. Every second wasted on fun times and every second wasted on teenage dreams. Its ridiculous how the beauty of it all seems to fade away when I think about the whole picture together. It's one of those things where the small things count the most. I don't like looking at the bigger picture because I'm looking in a mirror and seeing flaws that I don't appreciate and mistakes that I don't want to relive again.




But then I stop, and I find myself on a page where I have a picture of me, here and now. In this same exact spot and in this same moment in time and I'm smiling. I'm smiling because I'm happy with the adventures and the risks and the things ive learned. Not many people can look upon their own life books and smile and rejoice over the things they've accomplished. Many have still nothing to accomplish and nothing to smile over.


I appreciate the stories and the slow steady beat that I hear every single time I restart another one. I can tell them for days. I can mix and match words but the ending will always be the same. This isn't a game of telephone. This is my life, and you may think life is a game and you must do your best to win. But my life isn't about winning, it's about living. So cliche and you laugh and you smile but I'd rather lose than not breathe and feel and smell the air that surrounds me when I'm making mistakes or I'm reaching goals or I'm taking a walk in a new neighborhood and meeting new people.


This all seems to fall back into this jazz and blues sound stage. I feel like the wooden walls are about to fall at any moment. But i'm okay with every single part of it. I know what's behind it.






I know who I am.






I know who I want to be.






And, I know that I'll get there.





So keep flipping the pages. Keep retelling the stories. Keep taking your pictures.


It'll all match up to something one day.You'll look in the mirror and you'll see the field of mixed and matched happiness.