There is more than merely existing, watching time tick by, seeing the seconds fade away, as they funnel quickly through our fingertips.

There is more than just getting through the day.

There is living.

And in that moment, in her bedroom, alone, in the pitch black of a sad, bone-chilling winter night, in the midst of a stinging, fracturing heartbreak, she said yes to life.

Real life.

Not a sparkly, confetti-laced strawberry dipped fairytale fantasy—

Real life, in all of its real, gritty glory.

She sat in silence, watching her chest rise and fall, savoring the wild staccato thump, thump, thumping of her heartbeat, hearing the breeze whisper secrets to the swaying pine trees, and she cried softly, closing her eyes. And she said yes—

She said yes to loneliness.

She said yes to change—the change that swept through her bones like a fierce, howling wind and made her muscles quake with ancient fear.

She said yes to standing up and facing that fear.

She said yes to driving off into the apricot-singed, brandy-soaked sunset—alone—with no one but the long, curvy highway as her companion.

She said yes to pain. To beauty. To being brave enough to break.

She said yes to the teardrops that fell like a light Summer rain.

She said yes to adventures, especially the ones that seemed too risky, too scary, too crazy—those were the adventures she wanted to take.

She said yes to life—

Yes to the chaotic, echoing whispers of her soul.

Yes to her own heart.

She threw her arms

Up, up, up—

To the tie-dyed sapphire sky

She smiled and cried

Tasted stardust and pain

And she loved—

She fell in love with life,

All of it.

Not the flimsy, sequin-covered socially approved bulls*t swirling in her head—

Real life, in all of its real, gritty gorgeous glory,

Tears, messiness, discomfort, gentle sweetness and all.

And slowly, very slowly, her days opened up, her heart revealed itself like a tender lily, and with her head tilted back under the jeweled cobalt sky, she smiled a smile so big it could swallow the sun—

She became illuminated again.

Because the days were no longer colored with the single-minded quest to find love, to find a man, to avoid her truth, to desperately fill up the empty void inside her.

She sat alone, in complete simple silence, a few stray tears in her eyes, more content than she had ever been—the wind dancing through her hair, tiny snowflakes landing on her cheeks, the sound of her own heartbeat drumming wildly in her chest.

She came home to herself with gentle grace and remembered what she had known for so long.

This moment was her lover

This second was her soul mate

This life was hers

And she began

By saying

Yes

To this

Breath.

Author: Sarah Harvey

Editor: Sara Kärpänen

Photo: Katia Romanova / Flickr