Thanks, Emma Watson

The whole self-partner thing is really working out for me, 'cause I like how it sounds. I'm not looking for a partner, I've always kinda let those who came to stay, stay, and those who wants to leave, leave. I'm a let-things-fall-where-they-fall kinda person. 
I'm okay with being who I am and who I was and who I will be, regardless of who stays and leave. It's a necessary thing to ground yourself to you and not to someone or something so you never lose foothold. 

Of course, sometimes, memory comes and goes. You can't really help those kind of things, where you've made memories and they won't disappear. When you accept those things, it's easier to let them pass and you move along to other things.

I will be 24 next year, and new challenges will appear. And then 25, and 26, and so on. Maybe I'll die at 24. Maybe I'll die at 38. Maybe I'll die at 27. Who knows?
Some of my friends don't see themselves living beyond 30, that's more than what I can say for myself. I simply do what I can in the moment, and if things can't be helped, then so be it. 

I used to be so determined to hold onto some things. People, friendship, their places in my life. I would later learn that even the most constant person you thought would never change, will change. The only constant in this world IS change, and the better you live with that, the easier you breathe. You experience growth for yourself, and you observe growth in the people around you. 

For example, my mom. She and Dad were shocked when I admitted taking meds and seeing a psychiatrist for my mental health, and they had condemned me for it. But now, she would ask me about my mental state, and seek to learn better about the stigma around mental health to improve for the better for her family and the people she cares about. I still get anxious when she asks me about them, but I can rest easy knowing she does so in order to learn for the good. 
Sis has also grown over the years. Back when she never believed about my trauma for 2 years to now admitting she would try not to trigger my flashbacks when we talk about it.

People can change for the better, and you know they do when they love you.

Though sometimes, it doesn't always work that way.
Sometimes, people who you think will support you will disappoint you, and you work through that for a better relationship, a better bridge. You learn about gaslighting in the worst ways, and you learn about guilt-tripping in the hellish ways. You realize where you stand in your bridge between them, and for all these times the emotions you held back had a voice and a name. Even so, you fix things, and you be better. You draw a line.
Because at some point, you want to keep what you had, but knowing it's not the same and it never will be. The emotions that made you feel small and invalidated, you draw the line so you never have to feel them again when you're together.

Sometimes people rile you up for the things they want from you which you are unwilling to give, and you learn to differ them and persevere. Endure.

You realize people do the same when it comes to you, and you reciprocate.

Between being disconnected and being grounded, you tread a fine line like a fishing hook between two rocks on the opposing riverbank. One time, I feel irrational sadness, wistfulness, and nostalgia when I see a friend enjoying a long-distance relationship with her partner, and I distance myself from it so I would not be bitter towards my friend and her happiness. It is a part of being human, and I thought I handled it quite well. It was a flash and a second, and it did not last more than that. I was proud of myself.
Yet I still need to learn better control when it comes to my own person. It's easy to direct myself from not hurting anyone else, but not as easy when I have to do it from me.

I do, after all, have a history of self-harming.
Born from ten years of self hatred and shame and guilt and everything my abusers have given me, this is the one thing I likely will have the most struggle with.

Hitting myself when a wave of sadness leaves me gasping from sobs, cursing myself out for being so weak to my emotions, clawing my skin for allowing those sobs spill from my mouth. Hating myself for having MDD (Major Depressive Disorder). 
I need to learn to better regulate my self-hatred. Learning to forgive myself when I feel too much from absolutely nothing. Learning to regulate between functioning in the real world and in my own head. Learning to be the person who will love me because you must never trust your heart in someone else's. Be they parent, sibling, friend, or partner.
I am in charge of my heart, and I need to love myself for the better.

Someday, I will write letters for my children. Be they chosen or born, I will give them this. Children, learn to love your heart, and trust no one to heal them, for one who only knows you is you. Guide them, shine them, protect them, brandish them, but do it with your own. As much as your heart is your own, so will others to them.