Deeper

AFTER

The thing about being a good girl is, you spend your whole life developing a finely honed radar for detecting anything that could potentially cause people to love you less.

Girls like the one I was last August—we eat approval. We live for it.

So when we’re attacked viciously by a guy who goes out of his way to make us feel dirty and disgusting, our first reaction is always to take all the blame on ourselves.

My fault, we say. My fault, my fault, my fault.

It takes a special kind of person to pull our hands off our eyes and show us what it is we’re really looking at. Whose fault it is. What a useless exercise blame can be.

West taught me to make bread. He hoisted me up on a roof and kissed me until I saw stars.

He taught me that deeper is worth going after.

Because one text message can crack the solid ground of your life wide open. One bad decision, one flash of the camera, and the sunny, perfect part of your youth is over.

Then you get to decide. You look around, sift through the rubble, make your choices.

You arm yourself with love, friends, knowledge.

You figure out who you are. What you want.

You figure it out, and you go after it with everything you’ve got.

And that means sometimes you have to let yourself be scared. You have to turn left and take risks and make mistakes, because, otherwise, how do you find friends who will teach you how to tackle, to drink butterscotch schnapps for no reason at all, to strip down to your bra and dance?

When you’ve got a shot at deeper, you have to fist your hands in its T-shirt and pull it closer. Tug until fabric rips. Yank at it, reel it in until it’s naked up against your belly and you’re starving and full, desperate and satiated, dizzy and grounded.

You have to, because ugliness is everywhere.

Because life’s not fair.

Because the world is a seriously fucked-up place.

You have to, because beauty is out there, and it’s worth every sacrifice we make to seize it.

It’s worth it even if we don’t get to keep it.