DEAR IMPERFECTIONS,

About the happiest I’ve been in recent history is the moment I realized what I was not. I heard it said that we are not perfect beings and that it’s quite all right to be at home with all of our small imperfections.

So it is time to write you, imperfections, and tell you I accept you in all your guises in me. Yet I now know you are in me but not part of me – though you’d like me to believe you are.

What is important is that I no longer pretend to be something I’m not--which is perfect.

I have spent too many years studying spirituality, listening to someone else’s ideas of how I was supposed to be. As if I was not good enough as I was. I was told to act like I was something of an ideal me--someone who was better than me. A more perfect me.

I can’t tell you the unbearable pain this caused, living this way, so falsely, so unlike me, so very far from myself. For what part of me is not okay to be me? There is certainly not a single molecule of mine that I cannot at least try to accept as me.

I may not always be happy being me. Or proud even. But, as long as I accept that I am this being with all it’s wrinkles and warts and imperfections, I am just fine, thanks. It’s much too difficult a task--probably impossible--to be someone, something other than who I am.