She was angry for all the times he’d looked at her like she was too much.

All the subtle, whispered hints that she needed to calm down, tone it down and be less real.

Maybe he’d never moved his lips and said it outright, “Be smaller. Be quieter. Be less yourself.”

But he had said it with his eyes, his energy, his complete and utter fear of the earth-shatteringly powerful woman she was.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. And she—

She was finally angry for all the thousands of times he looked at her like she was too much.

So what?

Her soul spilled out into the streets, her heart was embroidered permanently in neon wildflowers on her sleeves…

So what?

She spoke sometimes with spikes and flames…

So what?

She wasn’t a cute little kitten who could be plied like soft clay into the precious watered-down image of what he wanted her to be…

So what?

She loved incredibly f*cking fiercely…

So what?

She felt deeply, profoundly, wildly and was achingly honest about the dripping kaleidescope tumultuousness of all the emotion that entered into her, like shockwave currents of electricity daily.

So what?

None of that is heartbreaking at all—but what is heartbreaking is that she ever entertained the idea of changing for him.

That she thought it was okay to dull herself down for him.

To be quiet for him.

To be less than the wild tornado she really is for him. 

What is really goddamn heartbreaking is that she denied her soul’s truth, letting its decadent, divine juiciness wither up, for him. 

Oh, the many misguided things she did to keep this relationship alive—as she herself, died slowly.

Sleeping next to him every night, a million icy miles away; catering solely to his needs, forgetting entirely about her own.

It wasn’t right, it didn’t feel right.

But she tried so hard to make it right, to stitch right-ness into all the things that felt so terribly wrong.

She tried so hard to be good. To say all the thing he wanted to hear—to be all the sweet things that would make him happy.

But she wasn’t born to be good. She was born to be real.

She was born be split-open, dripping, oozing, raw and delicious, dangling on the crescent edge of rapture itself.

She was born to feel, to love, to break free, to bloom, to explode, to shine madly—to taste the teary sunset in her heart and feel the sea pulsate in her throat and roar her deepest truth through a pitter-pattering thunderstorm of fiery, magnetic intensity.

She wasn’t born to be good.

But she tried, for him-–she tried, she tried so hard—she tried too hard…

She tried until it broke her into tiny shattered bits and pieces.

She tried until she was pale, hopeless, lifeless, permanently tear-stained.

She tried until she became a small, repressed watercolor fragment of the neon masterpiece she truly was.

But one day, she stopped trying.

She looked in the mirror—her mouth gaping wide open in shock, for she could barely believe the lifeless ghost of a reflection that stared back at her.

What a f*cking wake-up call.

Her vibrancy was nowhere to be found. Her warm, electric smile was absent. The sparkle in her eyes was overgrown with black vines of grief.

She vowed to find it all again—to find herself again. Immediately.

She vowed to find joy, purpose, truth and meaning. She vowed find the enchanted ember of spirit that still glimmered, thirstily, deep inside her. She was done abandoning herself, for good, once and for all.

So she stopped trying, and she started being.

Being raw. Being wild. Being breath. Being open. Being her sparkly, gorgeous goddamn self.

And on this day, this love—if that’s what you could even call it—died.  On this day, she became so vibrantly alive.

She apologized exactly not at all—and walked meaningfully out the door. She strode fabulously into the wild arms of her soul.

Maybe she had waited her whole life for the stunning freedom of this moment.

For it was no longer remotely acceptable to stomp out the flickering tangerine flames that yearned to encapsulate her.

It was no longer acceptable to forsake her insatiable appetite for life, for passion, for adventure, for the glorious gritty madness of truth—and constantly give away all of her precious time and energy to another, just to keep a half-hearted love affair alive.

It was no longer acceptable at all to live in a compact, grey shadow when she was destined to step into the pure lemony radiance of sunlight.

So she took the long-awaited step into that that sunlight.

Maybe she had waited her whole life for the stunning freedom of this moment.

She stopped trying, and she started being.

She chose herself.

She chose to be as exactly as loud and gentle and vivid as her soul told her to be.

She chose to only ever be with a man who wanted more and more of her—not less.

She chose herself.

In a tornado fury of soulful truth,

In a misty rainforest of pure poetry,

She choose herself.

She chose herself shamelessly. Fiercely. Selfishly.

It hurt, it ached, it felt foreign—the pain of letting go of what she thought she wanted, the pure terror of holding onto the deepest truth of what she really needed wasn’t pretty at all.

But it was far better than paying the bitter price of pleasing and appeasing a lover, just to have someone to keep her warm at night.

She could take the cold.

Hell, she welcomed the iciest gusts of whipping wind, she would feel it with the entirety of her being—

Because it was real.

And after trying so hard for so long, after denying herself access to the full scope of her power, after wearing a cute, compliant bullsh*t mask that never even came close to capturing the raw essence of her—she wanted real.

So she chose her own heart—the bruises, the shadows, the beauty, the pain and all.

She chose the gorgeous, multifaceted reality of her own heart.

It writhed and beat under her rib-cage, a rhythmic ruby sea waiting to break free.

It lapped over the edges and spilled out fantastically into the lush mountain evergreens.

She chose her own heart.

It was the hardest and most beautiful thing she ever did.

She chose her own heart.

Would she regret it?

Never.

Not even for a single second.

.

Author: Sarah Harvey

Image: Flickr/Mateus Lunardi Dutra

Editors: Yoli Ramazzina; Catherine Monkman