To all my girls who’ve never been crushed on before, all my fat girls weird girls “ugly” girls who grew up thinking they weren’t worthy because boys wanted nothing to do with them, who built so much of their self-value system on the things they weren’t told, the romances they didn’t have, the innocence they lost bit by bit by that silent revulsion they sat through every day, never uttering a word, secretly praying the passive disgust they endured would one day erase their entire beings for good:
I see you. I see you in your careful thoughtfulness, your seething anger, your contagious delight. I see every rich little bit of you. You are whole. You are worth more than you’d dare imagine, made double by every person who’s tried to quietly will you away, who overlooked you because they felt entitled to your permanence. You are still here. You exist in spite of it all because a part of you knows there is precious beauty and firm defiance in your every move, every breath. Listen to me: You deserve to take up your dimensions. You deserve to love and to be loved and to love yourself with the fervor of someone who did not think she was allowed to love before. Give yourself permission to feel worthy – nobody can grant you that but you. And thank you, my darling, for holding on, for daring to be, after all this time. You are the world, the sun, the moon. You are stronger than you know. You are everything. You are everything.