1. There existed a moment in time when you were freshly 19.
Brand new. Dancing around the bar your mom and dad spent their youth in. Everything was different. A mark of your triumph: a couple of bruises on your hip from accidentally brushing up against the edge of the table. The cold bottle felt fresher on your lips when it was finally legal. You felt as if you could rule the place, and in some sense, you did. You twirled around to a song you had never heard of and that you’d hate if you were even half-sober. Your bare feet scarcely left the ground as they stuck to the beer soaked floors, your heels clenched tightly up in the air by the kind hands of a stranger.
2. There existed a moment in time when someone loved you.
Maybe it was your mother as she watched you as a baby take your first little steps on an old, patched-up carpet. You could sense it as she turned from your chubby cheeks and wept. Maybe it was your ex-boyfriend who spat it out impulsively as you hid your smile beneath the blanket. You could tell from the way he said it: a sacred confession, long buried in his lungs, begging to be released from his lips. Maybe it was the girl in the Starbucks who drew a heart in yellow Sharpie on the lid. You could see it in the way she had tried to perfect it on some previous disposable cups, chucking the remainders in the trash. Maybe it was the old man that you helped step out of the passenger door, dementia-ridden , hopelessly confused, murmuring that you remind him of someone he used to know, but he just couldn’t quite put his finger on who. His love for you was evident. Whoever he was remembering, he was surely choking on the faint and distorted echo of their name.
3. There existed a moment in time when you felt proud of yourself.
In 5th grade, you were the girl who held up a blue ribbon that read “6th place”. No one thought such tiny legs could run that fast. In 11th grade, you were the girl whose high-school English teacher commended for writing an essay which was “excellent and profoundly thought-provoking.” He made you feel like some things in life were worth the damn effort. Since forever, you have been this girl. The girl who helps someone through the dark forests of their mind and into a lighter place, despite trudging through the mud all alone at times. You felt proud when you got better, and then you felt prouder when you got better, again. You felt proud when you continued to stay devoted, warm, loving and soft even though you were born in a world that hardens so many.
4. There existed a moment in time when you lit up a room.
The gold flecks in your naive, hazel eyes spilled into the palms of those who were lucky enough to share a life with you. Sure, your terror was absurdly visible, but it magnified as a sort of strength to the rest of the universe. You embodied the prayers of many and served as a divine missionary to yourself. Even when you hated the body you arrived to Earth in, even when you tried to drink it away or reject its embrace, something spiritual in you persisted and pushed onwards. There existed a moment when you lit up the room because you were destined to be there.
5. You are not a ghost.
You will not relive that very first sip in the shitty-dive bar of your hometown that you both loved and hated. Never again will you feel the scratchy carpet in your childhood home curled around your baby toes. You will never get to re-experience stretching out that blue ribbon in front of your face that says 6th place or wearing a pair of hazel eyes that are as youthful and shiny and untouched by madness. However, there will be plenty more moments just like these. You, rest assured, will feel brand new again. You will be loved, you will be proud, and this is where you are destined to be.