It’s October of 2025.  The smell of decay lingers underneath the morning dew, and the sunshine trickles to the forest floor like golden leaves.  The monarch butterflies and the indigo buntings have left the country. The land grows colder, the forest shows her true colors, and the flowers curl under the biting frost. I can feel the shift of the seasons, and the slow, inevitable march of time.

We weren't supposed to know we were beautiful or sexy.

I didn’t realize why inner beauty was so important until I began to grow up. Inner beauty was important because outer beauty was dangerous. Inner beauty and outer beauty were diametrically opposed warriors.

I knew I wasn’t beautiful outwardly, so, like other girls my age, I learned how to be inwardly beautiful. I wanted to leave beauty wherever my fingerprints landed, whether it was a dress, a childhood, or a painting.

“Growing up in a culture that thinks in black and white is easy—until something happens that shatters your black and white paradigm. Then, it’s the hardest thing in the world. All the things you thought were bad—depression, anxiety, sadness, cynicism, bitterness, anger, hatred— they’re all inside you. And religion dictates that there is no place for them in a good person. So, you’re left to stifle them, to pretend they aren’t there, to pray them out of you, and to watch in utter confusion as you lose sight of the person you thought you were.”