How I Learned To Love Myself Again

My mirror has been looking at me strangely lately. She says, I’d hug you if I could.

I blink at my reflection, caught off guard by the softness in my own gaze. I haven’t looked at myself like that in years. I breathe out, stunned. Survival deserves something unspoken, a word that settles quietly in the bones.

Choosing to stay was a calculated risk, one I took anyway. Not just in this world, but in this skin. I decided to root myself here, like a seed daring to bloom where it was once buried.

So I made quiet promises to my soul: no more apologizing for the volume of my existence, no more shrinking to fit spaces that were never made for me. From the attic of my heart, I pulled out an old toy chest, dusted off joy, and tried it on. It still fit, curving gently into a smile I almost didn’t recognize.

I began to gather small, honest things—sunlight slipping through the window, the comfort of clean sheets, scribbled thoughts on paper, the sound of my own voice humming at midnight. Healing, I realized, doesn’t taste like magic. It tastes like coming home.

And still, I’m here.

I thought I had lost myself somewhere along the way, that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back. But here I am—pulse and poetry, slowly unfolding into something whole.

Beneath the quiet aurora of my own becoming, I find that I no longer need to hear the words I love you from anyone else. Because finally, when I say them to myself, I believe them.