Between Then & Now || Currently Editing for Wattys 2022

28.

It's midday when I wake up again. In a parking lot for the second night in a row. But I'm still smiling.

This time, it's a parking lot somewhere on the outskirts of New York City. I made sure I parked in a safer area before settling in for the night. Not that that means much in NYC. But, thankfully, as I stand up and take in the interior of the van, blinking and rubbing my eyes, everything is just fine. Just how I left it the night before. No rogue serial killer, no burglaries.

I think back to the day before, to Dante, to the fresh tire, to the empty inbox, and I smile. There's a little bit of zest in my step as I get out of bed and head to the bathroom to get ready to explore the city.

Everything is absolutely perfect. Everything.

My hums ring around the tiny room as I put toothpaste on my toothbrush, and brush my teeth and do my make up and smile. I can hear my phone dinging over by my bed and Thelma's collar jingle as she shakes, but I'm in no hurry to go over and check it, because I know who the texts are from. And I know they'll still be there when I'm done.

I wipe some mascara from my skin underneath my lower lashes, and, then, I look up. And I stop.

The eyes of the woman who stares back at me seem entirely foreign. She blinks, and I pause. Then I lean in, holding myself up against the sink, studying the flecks of gold embedded within the darker brown, the lashes–neither long nor short–curling up against her eyelids. My eyes flitter across the blackheads on her nose, the small red dot above her right eyebrow, an almost unnoticeable scar on her chin from when she went searching for fae in the woods when she was five and tripped over a fallen log. When I lean back, the waves of her long hair objectively fall against her shoulder. And, underneath her baggy t-shirt there is an outline of breasts and hips and curves, non-sexual in its existence.

For a moment, I just stare at the woman in the mirror, running a finger over our lips, a hand through our hair, the natural golden light fluttering into the van and reflecting against our soft, feminine cheeks. For a singular, ephemeral moment, our bodies seem to glow and, for what I realize is the first time in quite a long time, I rather like this woman.

So, I smile at her–and she smiles back at me.

I try to remember the last time I had looked at social media, the last time I had read an article about the latest plastic surgery some celebrity got, the last time I had, really, been in contact with anyone other than the people directly in my life at any given time. And I can't recall it.

And I look back up at the woman and smile at her again. Because when the world no longer has a way to tell me whether or not I am beautiful, whether or not I am worthy, whether or not I am meeting some arbitrary standard I never got a say in, then how I view myself is entirely based on my own opinion.

And I rather like the woman looking back at me.

I step away from the sink, taking one last look at her before turning off the light and heading back into the main room to find some clothes.

It's funny–there's no one in the world who knows us better than we know ourselves. Yet, we tear ourselves down over the opinions of people who might not even matter in five years. We look in the mirror, letting the voices of people we don't even truly know flood into our minds, mocking the singular, natural zit on our nose. We degrade the way our lips aren't full enough, our stomachs aren't small enough, our eyebrows aren't neat enough–we berate the natural state of our existence without acknowledging how utterly miraculous our existence is within itself.

I hum and grab my phone to turn on some music. How exhausting it is to hate ourselves when we can't even do anything to change who we are. How futile. I think I like liking myself. Maybe that might change tomorrow, and maybe I might see some ad for some cream to cure the wrinkles I didn't even know I had on some billboard in Ohio. But, right now, I like who I am.

And how lovely it is to love someone again who we should never stop loving to begin with.