It is so easy to forget.

It’s easy to forget that you make your bed only to mess it up again.

To forget that you actually don’t like sweater weather as much as you thought

Or that you think the scorching heat of summer sucks even more.

It’s easy to forget that you actually enjoy walking in the rain before a raindrop rolls down your sleeve, or your coat gets soaked. 

It’s easy for me to forget that I actually like myself.

I have just encountered a shocking notion from my own brain waves, or perhaps shot to me from the holy host.

I am under no obligation to be exactly the way I am. 

Sure, I live by a Godly standard, I submit to God’s authority, and I try to be who He wants me to be.

But so many people DON’T choose those things. So many people live on the morals of their hearts alone, or even worse, on their own standard.

So many people choose to disobey, so many people don’t know how or what it means to disobey or even to follow instructions. 

God’s graceful beauty is how he forms us, each and everyone, whilst at the same time, giving us so much choice, or at least the very convincing illusion of choice. 

I am under no obligation, besides being a godly woman, to be exactly who I am. 

If I wanted, I could go out tomorrow and get a tattoo (i don’t want to), or piercings (also no), if I wanted I could insist to be called by a different name, dye my whole head or more drastically shave off all my hair and that’s just in appearance alone. 

I don’t have to be funny the same way, I don’t have to treat everyone the way I treat them now, I don’t have to drive ever again, or sing, or play a single key on the piano. I could completely cut meat out of my diet, and be hydrated for once in my poor parched life. I don’t have to visit my parents, or record podcasts, or watch the shows that I watch, or listen to the music I listen to.

I could go out every night and drink coffee and write, or move out into a tiny apartment, or get a car, or go to college and go into crippling debt. 

But I don’t, because, at least in illusion, I CHOOSE not to. 

I choose to be who I am every moment of every day.

I choose to be good, to be kind, thoughtful, brave, smart, artistic, fun-loving, and so tamely wild. 

I choose to be loving, and to be crazy, and to be afraid sometimes. And perhaps I am not always the most beautiful person or the best. But I can, I want, to choose to be the best that I can be. 

I chose blue hair, and sweaters, and really great yet terrible puns. I chose to find myself funny. I chose my sense of humor. I chose to stay up way too late. But hey, the world may be old, but in this moment my body is still young.

I guess I can only choose the good things though, perhaps everything else is a side effect.

Perhaps I overthink things because I care too much about what other people think of me.

Perhaps my intelligence makes me vain occasionally. 

Perhaps I am so emotional because I’ve allowed myself to be so painfully raw, to be artistic. 

Or maybe those are some of the base ingredients for a human. 

Okay, maybe there are some parts of me that I didn’t choose, some parts of me that my mother and father gave or withheld, and somethings I was taught. 

But at the end of the day, a lesson isn’t learned by lectures, it’s learned by listening, and more importantly, by choosing to listen. You don’t always get to choose your classes (or else math would have left long ago) but you get the choice to be a good student.

And from now on I chose to remember that I like myself.