In this story I become My own knight

I'm listening to quiet music on the kitchen radio. It's half past three in the morning, there's no moon, the stars flicker in the window like flowers chilling in the wind. I close my eyes and let the music pour through the cracks in my heart, mend my heart. To make me feel at home in my body.

All my life I wanted to be more open to love. To let it in, to host it. Can music teach me that? I don't know. But with every note, I feel my story being reshaped.

In this new story, I am not a victim whose heart is petrified. In this new story, I am someone who is learning to love again, albeit slowly. My story is taking shape as I write, and the old myths that I clung to, that hurt me, that dragged me down, are crumbling with it.

As I write, my past is left behind. I get rid of it like a snake shedding its skin. And suddenly I find myself lighter. Or is this what it is like to live in the present?

In this story, I suddenly become my own knight. I realize that the person who will save me from the evil dragon is myself and only myself. And that the dragon is really a little girl who just wants to be loved.

I've been waiting at the window all my life. But who? I've always longed for something. But what? What life? What world? And what did I do to get it, except wait at the window? Here, listening to Debussy on the kitchen radio, I realize that I never knew that.

Now that I think about it, I've always had my life in my hands. I could go anywhere I wanted. I could be anything I wanted. Or let me put it this way: I can go wherever I want. I can be anything I want.

I turn on the coffee maker to make a cup of coffee. As the coffee maker grumbles quietly, I smile to myself. Because in that moment I realize: I just want to be myself. I pour hot coffee into my favorite mug. I add a little almond milk. Although I don't know how to be myself yet, I believe that I will discover it somewhere along the way. As the almond milk dissolves in the coffee, I feel the dark brown melancholy I have felt deep in my heart all my life dissipate.

I can do this, I tell myself as I take a sip of my coffee. I can manage to be myself.

Something inside me tells me that the secret is to abandon all my false selves. That I have to leave behind everything I've learned that doesn't belong to me. That's why I have to keep writing. That's why I sit at the kitchen table at half past three in the morning, listening to Debussy on the kitchen radio and gathering strength to keep writing my story.

Music gives me strength and I know now that I can only heal by writing. As the notes pour in through the cracks in my heart like moonlight, my heart turns into a moon garden full of white flowers.

All that remains is to find someone I can invite into this garden. Someone I can love, someone I can call mine. Moreover, I know who that someone is, so I know who I should start with...

I place my hand over my heart, letting its warmth spread like sunlight to my chest and from there to my whole body. I love you, I whisper to myself, a little embarrassed. I'm not used to saying it, after all. I love you, I love you, I love you.

And I hope with every fiber of my being that it's true, that my words will reach my heart, because more than anything I want to be able to love this snake, naked after shedding its skin.