For You...Whenever You Appear

You are my favorite sound. My favorite warmth. My favorite sight. You make this world good, even on the bad days. Your words keep me together. And they tear me apart at the same time. You are my sun, moon, and all the stars. You have my heart, my soul, me. You have me. For now and for always. I am yours. And I am my own. We are each others. You let me be whatever I want to. You tell me to be honest. To be real. To not hate, but to love. You teach me more about myself in an hour than I have learned about myself in all the years before you. You make me smile, laugh, and sometimes even cry. But you also hold me, and reassure me, and make me laugh. You hold all the broken pieces of me in your hands. You try to put them back together sometimes, but you have also learned that some of those pieces are better left out. You are still a mystery to me. An unknown factor. A mystery I can't wait to figure out. You haven't shown up yet. Or maybe you have and I just haven't noticed yet. I am waiting. Maybe not patiently all the time, but I am waiting for you. Whenever you want to show up. Whenever the time is right. You have me. All that I can give is yours. I hope you feel the same.

Love,
Me 

You Are a Human

You are a human being. It may not seem like you're important to the world. But there is a reason that you're here. There is a reason you were created. It might not be obvious to you yet, but you'll find out what it is as soon as you need to. It's okay to feel afraid. It's okay to not know what you're doing. To be honest, most people don't know what they're doing. We're all just trying to figure out life at the same time.

Life is full of weird, scary, and confusing times. We've all been through them in different times of our lives. They are what let us connect to each other. We can share our experiences to help others learn the lessons we had to learn the hard way. It seems we're all here to help each other out. Help each of us to learn, to love, to enjoy life in the best way we can.

You are a human being. You are a wonderful, amazing person who is meant to do so much. You mean so much to so many people. We may forget this sometimes, but we matter. Not just to those around us, but to the world. We matter because we exist.

I know that sounds crazy. Why would one person living on a world that has billions of other people on it matter? Why would we be important? And I don't know the answer to that. I wish I did, but I don't. No one really does, no matter what they say. What I do know is that it's true. That each and every person on this world means something, an even if we don't notice it, we make a difference. In the lives of those close to us and even to those that we may only see once in our lives. We get to make the choice on how they remember us, if it's that kind stranger who smiled at them when they were having a bad day or if we're that person who made their good day turn into a bad one.

This world may be full of people. We may be insignificant in the long run, but at this time, right now, we are here. And we matter. Maybe 100 years from now we'll be forgotten, but right now we have so much to do. So much to live for, believe in, and look forward to.

I hope you can remember this. When you have a bad day, when life gets too hard, remember that you matter. That there is a reason to your existence and even if you don't know what it is at this exact moment there will be a day where you do. This is to remind me that even on the worst days there is a reason. A reason to go on. To try again. To wake up in the morning and know that I'm one day closer to figuring things out just like everyone else.

We can be humans together. We can make bad choices together. We can help each other hold on when the other just wants to let go. We can remind each other that we matter. Because sometimes that's all you need, So, I hope you remember this. Above anything else, remember that you matter. We can do this. Together.

Love,
Natalie

Why Love?

You know love is such a weird concept. We can love another person, we can love animals, we can love certain foods, we can love literally everything. But we never love them in the same way. I don't love my best friend in the same way I love my favorite food. I also don't love my best friend the same way I love my family. The thing is, there is no other way to describe how you feel about things that you like more than other things. Love is all we have.

In so many ways, love is all we have. Loving a family member isn't the same as being in love with another person. You don't get to choose your family, but you get to choose a stranger. It doesn't really make sense. Why we choose certain people out of all the others in the world and then we decide that's the person I want to are about. That's the person I want to rely on and depend on and come home to every day. We decide who we make important.

But we don't get to decide who chooses us. We don't get to decide if someone loves us. We don't get decide who thinks we're important. It isn't fair really. Being able to give someone your whole heart and them being able to decide if they want to hold onto it or not. It makes me wonder why we are so careless with our hearts at times.

Why do we not think about what might happen if we were to give up our hearts? Why do we usually jump head first into relationships with people we barely know? It doesn't make sense, yet we all do it. I guess we are just trying to find that person we decide to make important and the only way we know how to do that is to give pieces of ourselves out until we finally find the person who will protect all of our pieces and replace the ones we gave away.

The hurt of getting pieces of ourselves broken or taken from us changes us. We become different.

No matter how we much we try to protect ourselves from getting hurt, we can't always prevent it.

It's so much easier to talk about things like this when you can project onto someone else. When you can take the I's and the me's and turn them into we's and us'. It makes us feel like we're not the only ones who are afraid of things like getting hurt. It's kind of funny that the pain of something so terrible can unite so many people.

I guess in the end that's the best part about being able to love so much. By loving, we can connect to others. We can find new stranger who become friends who we love. And then when we get hurt, because we inevitably get hurt, we can connect to those who have felt our pain before. We learn that the pain that we are feeling is survivable because they've survived it.

So here's to love, in all of it's many forms. And here's to feeling pain, because it lets us know we're still alive. We're still here and we're going to be okay. Because we will be. In the end everything will be okay. As long as there is love in this world, we'll be okay.

Giving you all my love,
Natalie

Tell

Tell me you love me.
Tell me things are going to be okay,
even if you don't believe it.
Tell me life is going to get better.

Tell me these things,
especially when I don't believe you.

Tell me life is worth living.
Tell me you're always going to be there,
even if you don't believe it.
Tell me we'll be okay.

Tell me everything.
Tell me all your secrets,
all your crazy ideas and sad moments.
Tell me everything about you,

I want to know it all.

Then let me tell you.

Let me tell you how much I love you.
Let me tell you everything is going to be okay,
even if you don't believe it.
Let me tell you how life gets better.

Let me tell you these things,
especially when you don't believe them.

Let me tell you life is worth living.
Let me tell you about how I'll always be there,
even if you don't believe it.
Let me tell you we'll be okay.

Let me tell you everything.
Let me tell you all our secrets,
all of my crazy ideas and sad moments.

I want to tell you them all.

On Loving Others and Yourself

Baby, if you are ever left wondering if he loves you, take a moment. Think back on all the times you've had this feeling. Every moment you questioned how someone could ever possibly love you. And then look at yourself because if you don't love yourself first, you'll never believe anyone else can.

It's something you have to learn. There have been times where I've avoided every mirror and reflection I could. There are still days I do this. Day, months, years have gone by with me hating myself because I was uncomfortable with myself.

And loving yourself is not as easy as it sounds. It takes so much work. When the world around you is continuously telling you you're not lovable because you don't have the right body, clear skin, and are so awkward you make yourself uncomfortable it's hard to find things to love.

There is no way for me to get you to love yourself. Darling I so wish I could. I would sit you down and make list after list of all the reasons you deserve to be loved. I would tell you how beautiful your crooked smile is, how amazing you are at teaching, how much you have changed peoples lives. I would tell you that those things you so hate about yourself are so beautiful, because they are a part of you.

If I knew you would believe me, I would tell you all of this. But baby, I know you won't. At least I know I don't. And I don't know how to fix this. I don't know if you can. I'm trying to love myself just like you. I'm trying to figure out how someone else could possibly love me in any way and I still haven't found out the answer. But I keep trying.

We are truly our worst critic.

I hope you can learn to be kind to yourself. I hope I can learn to be kind to myself. Be true to yourself. Be kind to yourself. But above all love yourself. Because God knows you deserve all the love in the world.

Love,
Natalie

Fighting Battles

I hope you're good to one another. If that's all you get out of this, that's okay. This world is not always kind. Everyone has demons they face on a daily basis and even if we can't help them in their battle we can at least not make it harder on them.

I know it's something we've always heard. "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." It's something we have been reminded of continuously, but it seems to be forgotten by so many people these days. We've grown up in a world that tells us strangers aren't important. We're told they're just extras in our lives and they don't matter. But that's isn't the case.

Everyone has their own lives, yeah, that's true. But we should be glad to be a part of it even if it's just a smile, because a simple smile can end with you sharing your life with that stranger you smiled at because they looked like they were having a bad day.

Some days we may feel like we're just skin and bones. Nothing else. Not a heart full of love or a mind full of thoughts. Darling, I know that these are going to be the hardest days to be kind to others. Try to remember those days that were made a little better by someone else's smile.

Put on your armor when you need to. Protect yourself from your own demons. No one is going to look at you as being less if you need to. Use your kind words, your smiles, your love, your hope on the evil you face. Show them they can't destroy you.

You will face hate in this world. It's just a sad fact. There will always be someone throwing hate into the world. You might not be able to stop them, but you can at least soften the blows. Going around with your hands held out may get you hurt more often, but you're going to gain so many more experiences. Being open, being real, it might not seem like it, but it makes you tough.

There will be people in this world who will help you up just to push you back down again. I know it doesn't make sense, why people would hurt someone else purposefully but it happens way too often. Don't be that person. Become people's refuge. Become the person they know they can come to when life gets too hard because they know you'll be there to tell them "It's going to be okay. You can get through this. I'm here for you." Because that's usually what they need to hear anyway.

Be kind. Be loving. Be hopeful. We need more people like that in this world and you might just be able to change someones life. You're going to do great things, I know this. Just don't let the world get to you before you accomplish them.

Love,
Natalie

Those Moments

Sometimes the right thing comes into your life at the exact moment you need it. Whether it is a person, a song, a poem, a book, or even an experience - that's something that only you know.

Each of these things has the ability to impact us in so many ways. It takes a special person to come into your life and make you either realize how important you are or to make you realize that you haven't been living your life to it's greatest potential. These people are so special but we don't really realize it until they've done their job. Until they've made us see and understand what it was they were placed into our lives for. And I truly believe that these people are placed into our lives. When you look back and are able to say because of this person in my life I have become the person I am today, for better or worse, has an impact on us. You will always remember the first person who told you they loved you, the person you admired when you were growing up, the person who inspired you to do what you love. These people will never be forgotten by you, even if they don't know it. These are our special people. Whether it's the teacher who made you fall in love with reading or the friend who you aspired to be like, they will never be forgotten. And you will never be the same because of them.

Now songs and poems are a little different. They hold memories. They never change. You can't be disappointed by the actions of a song or a poem. But they can change your life. Hearing a song or even a poem about how you feel tells you you're not alone. It tells you there have been other people out in this world that have felt like you do and they survive it. So, just maybe, if they have survived it then you can too.

Life-changing. That's the way a lot of books are described to be. And for some it is so very true. The thing about life changing books is, they usually aren't written to be that. They're honest and real and make you feel something. They're the books on your shelf with folded corners, notes in the margins, and falling apart because they've been read so often. They're the ones you had to be forced to put down. They're the ones you return to again and again because it feels like you're visiting old friends. That's what makes books so amazing. You can live out these amazing stories through these characters. I can't tell you how many book characters I aspire to be like. You can learn so much from reading a good book. Like being brave in the face of danger. That it's okay to not always have a plan. That people you love will hurt you. That life is hard, but if you people willing to face it with you everyday you will get through it. And so much more.

Experiences are the hardest. They aren't always easy. They aren't always happy. But I guess that's true about most of life. It's not easy and it's not always the happiest. The experience of your first "I love you" changes you. The experience of your first job, of a loss, of depression, of joy, of love, of hope, of so many things changes you. I know it sounds cheesy, but we are never the same after experiencing these things. Love changes us. Loss changes us. Experiences change us.

That's one of my favorite things about this life. That we are always able to change. If you don't like something  about yourself you aren't stuck with it forever. Sometimes it just takes us a little longer and a little bit of help to see it. We are never stuck with how we act or how we perceive ourselves or others. We are always changing and adapting. It's how we find out who we are. There are some times when we might need a little help. That's why these things are so important. They help us become someone we're proud of. It might just take a little longer than we hoped. But hey, at least we get to experience all these amazing things on they way there.

Love,
Natalie