20.

When I look back, I realize that there is no sorrow, no regret and absolutely no contempt to hold against my past. I see myself growing into someone I will be proud of once this phase has passed and with this I realize how life is made up of these little fragments that are so deeply connected to those around them. That’s how people come to affect us so intrinsically.

I used to write stories years ago but I could never complete them. I always wondered what it’d be like to complete one, to reach an end, something definite and finite. Years later I know that if we never learn to embrace our beginnings then the ending can never make sense. I thank God each day for friendships and love that are much more than what others usually experience. You don’t read about it in books and you never get to watch it on TV, you live it and that is the only way to become a part of happiness that is wholesome and pure.

You see it in eyes that sparkle with emotions, in sentences that are interrupted by constant laughter, on bad days when you’re not alone like you used to be and in the faces of people that simply care for you and cherish you in ways no one else ever did, they were never meant to anyway.

Twenty years later, I’m content and at peace with my surroundings and God, with opening up to the right people and loving like I never have before. This isn’t just another phase; it’s a whole new lifetime, a beginning that reeks of hope and goodness, of lilies and hibiscus, of honesty and blue skies, of vulnerabilities and poetry.

-Nameera.

Image Credits: Unsplash