Some days I wake happy.

I don't feel like this today. I wish I did but I feel like my insides are giving way. I'm tired, sad, angry, unhealthy and uninspired today. But I'm hoping to change that. Another morning not so long ago, I wrote the following. And perhaps a time will come when I always wake with that energy. Here's putting a prayer out there...

There are mornings I wake up and the sun is in my eyes, and it blinds me to myself and I think I may really be beautiful. This is not the lament of a bikini model, but the soul song of a teenage girl who has never left me. And it will not be a morning where I will stand at the mirror and curse it for how much it reflects. I will instead reflect upon myself, and imagine my hair falls like mermaid locks. I will envision my skin as a desert of dry perfection, no rain of tears stains this plain. No mirror will show off the scars on my knees and the dents in my thigh; the down on my arms and the awry tattoos taken in haste and paid for with innocence. There will be no compulsive changing of outfits today, as I curse jeans and skinny ankles and dainty feet. Instead on this rare morning I will enjoy feeling ‘wholesome’. Say the world with me: wholesome. Full. A sponge cake with vanilla essence. There are mornings when I wake and I am this good, I am this right, I am a smile in slow motion, a cat after a meal. I am sweet as a macaron, but I am not delicate, no, I have lines and marks and shape and form, and these hips they swivel and the world moves around them. You cannot draw me with a pencil in straight lines. You will have to paint me with a brush loaded with bristles, and every curve, every swerve, makes a woman of me. Say the word again, wholesome. Ripe, lovely, resplendent. My chest is ambitious and my hips are cheeky in their confidence. My thighs pretend to be robust, to match my laugh. I am not salty like a crisp or some brittle breadstick, but sweet like a pudding. I have meringue toes and cherry nipples. There is no frost in this dessert, I am warm apple pie topped with honey and whipped cream. I have not the wispiness of dreams, but the bold, stout, lewdness of reality. Twenty nine years have turned me into a merry Modigliani.

I know men who have a love of this imperfection. Who don't love a woman despite her flaws but for her flaws. Who have embraced the signs of my mortality that insist that I be loved now for I may be lost tomorrow. The words of my past printed on my skin like a Book Of Clues for the attentive lover. The very essence of womanliness appearing in streaks across my thighs, showing they have walked the Earth wild. The creasing of my mouth, saying I have laughed, and eyes explaining how much I have cried. The imperfections will show you a woman who has seen and felt and been so much. Perhaps I am after all finally what I always desired to be - a woman of the world. One who has grown and shrunk and grown again over the years. How my body has echoed my moods.

The sands of time run through my shape and they shout out in an alto, not a soprano voice, “She has been worthwhile!” I will listen to this song of happiness and pretend the whole world thinks like my cocky inner self does today, and tell myself, “Sshhh...You are the most beautiful girl in the world.”