Learning to Love feat Gail Kilker Photography (OC, California)

"Hello Jin," I whispered into my folded arms, my hands clutching around my sides, feeling my quivering ribs beneath my desperate fingers. "It's OK Jin," I hold myself and try not to cry, try to just breathe into the moment, to tap into the infinite joy that exists, always, in the stillness of the present. "I love you, Jin," the tears well up regardless, my words come out choked and broken, and they sound completely foreign to my ears. Had I ever said them before..? Had I truly almost-reached 30 and never once told myself how much I mean to me? How beautiful I am? How strong and proud and determined and wonderfully, shatteringly human I am? I've shouted it from digital rooftops, I've screamed it in laughing faces and graffitied it on walls under cover of night.. but have I ever said any of it to Myself??

I never knew I needed to. I've spent my whole life looking at love's dancing, warped reflection on the water, trying to achieve what was only an illusion. 

"I love you, Jin."

I say it daily now. I say it, and I mean it.

​Or at the very least, I'm learning to mean it more every day. They don't teach you this in Hollywood.

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