You’ve Got Every Right to a Beautiful Life
By: Rachael Hope
Tags: Self Love, Divorce, Personal Growth, Relationships, Self

You’ve Got Every Right to a Beautiful Life

My tattoo serves as a forever reminder of the life I deserve, and the worth I embody

Photo by Min An from Pexels

When my marriage fell apart, my children and I moved in with my mom and her husband. One room for me, one for the kids, and most of our stuff waiting to be divvied up at the old house or in storage. Those first few months are enveloped, memories covered in a blurry tangle of heartache. It’s intangible, but somehow I find an acute awareness of feelings and experiences I had during that time.

At a time in my life where I had let it be dictated for far too long how worthy I felt, the idea that I had the right to something better was a revelation.

During spring break when the kids were gone and my mom was out of town, I encountered alone-ness in a way that I don’t often have a chance to feel. For over 48 hours I had the whole house to myself- something I hadn’t experienced for years. I did what I wanted. I focused on myself. It was a foreign sensation, thinking about only myself. I decided to take full advantage of this silver lining handed to me by my recent unemployment. Being selfish isn’t always a bad thing, and when you’ve lost yourself, you have to learn how to take care of yourself again.

On the afternoon of my second day of solitude, I found myself downtown. I walked in the crisp spring air, window shopping, feeling my true self beginning to emerge. I was perusing Craig’s List, looking for a date. After years of it not mattering what I wanted, it wasn’t always easy to figure out what to do with myself. Empowered by my freedom and the agency to do whatever I pleased, a primal, deep, lonely craving for connection buzzed.

During the last few years of my marriage, everything around me grew thick and sticky. I was lost, my spirit dimmed, and I couldn’t see any way out of it. There is so much story in those last few years that sometimes I feel like I could burst with it. Little by little, it began to come, when I finally got a moment to breathe. Even now, years later, I have to let the bits and pieces run down my arms and into keyboard slowly and intentionally, and not all at once. Then there they are, loose in the universe. It’s freeing. It’s scary. It’s difficult. It’s imperative.

Those warm spring afternoons alone lifted the fog of entanglement with my left-behind partner and the self I’d thought I was, and the brightening was accompanied by a song. Music plays an important role in many lives, I’m not unique in that it’s been an important to me as a way to express my feelings and connect with people. As an empath, music finds its way into my heart and speaks to me.

There is something about finding that one song, that mix of words and music and poetry that somehow is exactly what you need to hear at that very moment. You hear it, and you know that every time you hear those notes, those chords, you will be transported to a feeling or moment that meant something to you. Sometimes, it is something deep that winds and vines around your insides, pulling at you.

I am seventeen, eyes closed, swaying in the hot summer breeze to Sarah McLachlan’s Elsewhere at Lilith Fair, and I’ve reached some kind of teenage nirvana.

I am thirty-two, and tears stream from my eyes as Pink and Nate Ruess sing “we’re not broken, just bent, and we can learn to love again,” and I want it to be true so desperately even though I know it’s not.

You never know where it will come from, and sometimes, as I found out, it comes from Selena Gomez. Songs can get us through hard times, and I had an anthem.

I’m no beauty queen, I’m just beautiful me

You’ve got every right to a beautiful life Who says?

Who says you’re not perfect?

Who says you’re not worth it?

Who says you’re the only one that’s hurting?

Trust me,

that’s the price of beauty.

Who says you’re not pretty?

Who says you’re not beautiful? Who says?

At a time in my life where I had let it be dictated for far too long how worthy I felt, the idea that I had the right to something better was a revelation. I had lived, walked, slept, worked, and parented within a haze of not knowing that I had the right to more, that everyone has the right to feel human, and alive, and loved, and beautiful. There it was.

Walking downtown that afternoon, all that had built up within me culminated in the strength to tell the world that I was finished letting others dictate my worth. Sitting in my parked car, I pulled an envelope from my glove box and tore it in half. I wrote there, in my own handwriting, the reminder that ran through my head every time I sang that song, every time I remembered why I was where I was.

It was the first time I’d ever gotten a tattoo without telling anyone first, without talking about it, without an appointment. It is the smallest, simplest tattoo of my nine, 5 minutes and a $60 minimum, and I’d forgotten how much it hurts, but it was all worth it.

This ink is a permanent and perfect reminder of the power I can find within myself. It is not a shout. It is not me telling off the world. It is quiet, and soft, and not for anyone else to hear. Every time I turn my wrist over, I can hear a whisper floating in the wind, from that afternoon when it smarted, tender and fresh, into forever. Who can tell me what I deserve from life; whether I deserve to feel loved? I can.

Who says? Only I do. No one else. I made that mistake, and I will never make it again. I am worth it. I am beautiful. Who says? My own handwriting, telling me not to forget. This is my forever reminder.

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