Adorably Imperfect...

The best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people, but when each individual learns to love the imperfections of others and can love you for your imperfections too.

-Author Unknown

A girl I went to high school with had this quote as her facebook status today.  Clearly a smart, gifted, happily married woman...thank you Jessica. (no, not ME, her name is Jessica too.) 

The truth is: Nobody is perfect and the people who think they ARE perfect are usually more imperfect than the majority.  

I've spent half my life trying to live up to somebody's standards and expectations of what I should or shouldn't be or what is and isn't "normal". When in reality everybody's individual circumstances, families, experiences, and life stories define their own individual and unique 
"normal".  


Fact: You can't change somebody else's "normal". 


Who are you, who am I, who is anyone else in this world to sit in judgement and decide what is right or wrong or "normal" for another human being? What is "normal" anyways?

Something to think about, right? Shamefully, we've all done it but the bigger question is whether you have learned from your mistakes or whether you choose to continue to make the same mistakes over and over again? 

I used to want to live up to the expectations. I used to want to live up to the "perfectionist" standards. So much so, that I was willing to slowly kill myself to do it. I used to twist myself into a pretzel to the point that I was literally naked, void and inside out and not even a shadow of the same person I once was.  I remember the days of "rock bottom" well. I will eerily never be able to forget. I remember the defeated, exhausted, crippling feeling of believing and preferring the option of DEATH over having to live one more day in THAT miserable, sick world of measuring up. All to try to be "good enough" in someone else's eyes. For someone else's world. For someone else's "normal".

It has taken me nine years of hiding and battling an eating disorder and another eight years in recovery, treatment and therapy (Yay, go me!!!), getting married, becoming a Mama, new life and death, and now getting divorced to finally come to terms with what really, truly makes a person happy in life and matters in MY world.

I don't want to be perfect. I don't want my daughter to be perfect. I don't want my future partner to be perfect. I don't want perfect friends. I don't want a perfect family.  I don't want a "picture perfect" life. 

I choose real, authentic, honest, open, happy, loving, forgiving and proud.

I am perfectly happy with ADORABLY IMPERFECT.

Vintage Mama & Bella