I've spent many hours this past week reflecting. It's odd, I find myself so tired, but sleep is elusive and most days I find myself laying in the sticky grass under the sunshine dissecting who I am and who I want to be.

Anyone who has ever made it past my walls knows how much I struggle with the idea of unconditional love and that I hate how dirty my heart usually is. I'm a fake. I project a heart of gold when all I have is perhaps some tarnished scraps where a heart should be.

I want to be:
kind and strong
intelligent and whimsical
empowered and beautiful (inside)

I want to break down the barriers of American culture that have so firmly locked me down. I want to feel free to believe my heart even if it's radical. I want people to see that you can be a feminist and beautiful; that you can be empowered and kind. But most of the time I just fail miserably at these things.

Anyway, back to reality. There are some people lately that it's been a challenge for me to be around and today I kind had an awakening of sorts (perhaps it was sunstroke, haha). I need to forgive every morning. I need wake up and give these people a new chance. I need to empathize from where they are coming from and put myself in their shoes. Do I need to be best friends with them, no. Do I need to trust them, no, I really don't think I do. Do I need to extend grace to them, yes. Do I need to at least love them for being human beings, yes. Do I need to at least see something good in them, yes. Because if I can't do these things for others, how can I ever think for a moment that I deserve the same treatment? And yet, I frequently find myself in place of self-righteous anger because they've treated me in the same fashion I've treated them.

Somehow, someday, I'm going to understand this love thing. It's so easy for me to love those on a global level who I feel have suffered injustice, it's so much harder for me love those I come into contact everyday.