He comes up behind me as I lie still, curled up in the bed."Shhhh," he whispers, though I haven't moved, haven't said a thing.
I wanted to get up when he came in; when I heard the door open behind me. Wanted to occupy myself to hide my tears, my frustration, my pain. But he keeps telling me: Marriage is about showing me all the parts of you that you don't let anyone else see.
So I lie still.
And my tears drip down his arm that is curled around my head, cupping the crown of my head in his palm.
"I love you, baby girl." He punctuates his whispered words with kisses to my temple: "Always, always, always."

I haven't written in a while. 

So much has changed.

I wrote this some time ago:

You are beautiful. Stop criticizing your reflection in the mirror or comparing yourself to others. Stop judging yourself based on your comparison of yourself to others. Stop letting others judge you with their words and actions. Their judgment of you only matters if you decide it does. They can only affect you if you let them. Define yourself. Take charge. Be the person that you want to be. Don't cower in fear from the judgment of others; speak your mind. Your voice is worth hearing. Your opinion matters. 

It sounds simple. It's like something you read every day. It's commonplace advice. You can hear it on the radio, coming from the mouths of motivational speakers, or see it on a poster slathered onto a classroom door. It's easy to read over and glaze over. Much harder to put into practice.

It's so very easy to sink into the feeling of not being good enough. To accept that. Because it's comfortable and its something familiar. I look at others who excel at something that I want to be good at, and I get discouraged. I compare who I think I am to who I think they are and I feel that I can never compare. And I never stop and think how wrong it is of me to think like that. 

That short paragraph that I wrote, I wrote for myself. It was something I needed to hear.  Because sometimes pushing against my insecurities feels like I'm pushing against the wind. Like I can never really win.