"Poet"

"When you think of something beautiful what is the first thing that pops up in your head?" 

Pain. 

Giving thought to how one takes on beauty can either be uniquely amusing, or redundant. Though it is the expression of pain that makes the word beautiful come together hand-in-hand. It might be vile to assort these things together. When one thinks of the word beautiful it's unlikely that one would fixate on the hurt. 

The thing about pain is that it demands. If not expressed it consumes you. Through expression, anything can come out with feeling so much at once. The best stories, songs, literature, and creativity come from being trapped in a state of recovery. There is beauty in the outcome that pain establishes. Within the drowning and suffocating trap, there is beauty in the lingering expression of creativity. 

Heartbreaks, family issues, relationships, and just being an adult come with an assortment of feelings. Agony, ache, struggle, and hurt can break your soul while dealing with any of the given situations. Pain is hard to deal with especially when it's excruciating and makes you restless. The best things I have done have been done when life felt like it was swallowing me whole. The good thing about pain is that it motivates you to conquer the unthinkable, and become a better version of yourself. 

I thought about this question of what beauty is and thought about the aspects of hurt that have helped define me. Realizing that agony doesn't always have to be full of darkness. 

Sometimes I feel as though the pain I experience will forever follow me and haunt me. I carry this lingering anxiety and anger with me. At my lowest of lows, I felt like I'd never leave this peace of mind. I was gifted a notebook around this time and I wrote until my hand would cramp, which I still do to this day. 

Before I fall into a deep sleep I think of future pieces I desire to write about. In that small notebook lies the beauty of the pain of a naive teenage girl. What lurked in the shadows became expressed in columns of words; poetry. 

It wasn't until my experience of pain that I realized the gift of creating something beautiful out of something that seemed to be unbearable. 

In the center of my chest, I carry the outcome of pain. The ink tattooed to my chest, black and in typewriter font, is the word "poet." Forever reminding me the demanding pain can be expressed beautifully.