What you've done has made you who you are
But you are not what you've done.

Life is full of lessons, but I'm not the first person to put those words together. Sometimes lessons are confusing and hard, and sometimes they're easy as pie. I have a hard time sitting in a classroom being told what my lesson will be, but out here I can roam the real world and find something that will change my life forever.
Not all lessons are immediate. Some lessons will take weeks, some many years, some lifetimes. I met somebody who showed me all my flaws. He never meant to, and I don't think he realizes how much he taught me, and all I can tell him is "thank you".
And I'm ready to be a new person. I'm ready to accept my old flaws and my old ways and put them in a box. The box woll never be shut, it'll never be ignored, it will always be there. That toy that you loved as a kid is still lost in the ground somewhere, maybe the paint has faded and the features a little less detailed, but it's still there. You're still the people that you used to be, you've just accepted them and moved forward and become someone new.
You are all of your miss-steps
You are all the things that you thought you could get rid of
You are messy and you are beautiful
You're not broken
You're not wrong
You're just difficult.
You are a hard lesson. You are bloody knees from running too fast when you were excited.
The feeling of butterflies in my stomach used to be a friend. I used to thrive on it, I used to think that it was the only way to make a decision. If I wasn't feeling that, then I wasn't feeling anything. But now I realize how naive I was.
I was chasing a feeling, not something tangible. I was confusing myself with beautiful dreams, and not caring about the reality.
Reality can be beautiful
It can be really hard to accept that the things that you see around you are what you are meant to see
Maybe you noticed a little bit more or little bit less or your focus isn't where other people's is
But you need to be aware of one thing
You are not a mistake
You are not seeing the wrong thing
You are not learning the wrong lessons or loving the wrong people
You can shift your perspective, you can learn from all those sleepless nights and the forced poetry you wrote about them. You're not wrong, you're just unsure
You're just uncomfortable by the mess that you left, and sometimes you can't go back and clean it up. You made this bed, and they say that you have to sleep in it, but you can remove the sheets.
You can watch them circle in the wash, blending their shapes together and rinsing away what used to be.
You can remake the bed, and the sheets might be the same, but they're cleaner and feel nice against your skin.
You don't have to be your own enemy, you don't have to beat yourself up and close your eyes tight when the mirror looks back at you.
You can be your own friend.
Love yourself.