We all have flaws, perceived or otherwise, that have plagued us since youth. Or at least we just simply always remember worrying about them. I’m not smart enough. Or my legs aren’t long enough or I’m too introverted. Whatever it may be, it is something that probably weighs us down.

Where did it come from? Did you wake up one morning and simply think it or feel it? Or most likely, did it stem from something someone said once. Maybe we remember EXACTLY when it started, the exact moment someone said something that stuck with us. Or maybe we’ve blocked it out, and just somehow think it’s some universal, unconnected truth that just is, as if it’s a fact.
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I’ve written about my legs before. I can remember an exact moment in a car when I was about 13. I was squished in with a few friends coming back from the movies, my brother driving us. It was summer and hot and we all had shorts on and windows down. I looked to the left to one of my best friends, her leg pressed against mine, and I had two thoughts, thoughts that always seem to pop into my mind, like it was yesterday. One was that her leg was so much skinnier than mine. I couldn’t stop looking at it. The second was how tan hers was next to mine. I felt pasty and unattractive and what probably really makes this memory stick is that my brother commented on it. That my legs were too big for us to pile in the back and all fit. He never said fat. They weren’t. They were just—bigger. Muscular. And too short. Always too short.

And it makes me wonder: Does everyone feel that? Do even the most happy, the one most smiling, the one who seems to have it all, feel those things too? I never thought about it much until I was older, until I actually spoke to my brother about such things, him aghast that such a small comment that, to him, meant nothing but a silly joke, could leave such a lasting impression on my psyche. Because to him, it was such a non-issue; to him, in some strange way, he was complimenting me on my hard work.
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I think the things that stick with us the longest or the most come from people we love or trust who let us down. I often wonder, had a stranger said that if I would have given it two thoughts. Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s the people closest to us that can hurt us the most. In love. In friendship. Anyone we let in. And maybe that’s why it’s easier to keep people at a distance. The rocks of words can’t hit as hard far away. But up close, they can leave scars. 

It's funny. My dad always loved that song from Fiddler on the Roof, maybe one of the earliest memories I have of musicals, a love of mine. And though I often hear people talk about the sunset and all its beauty, I rarely hear people talk about the sunrise. So today, I want to talk about the sunrise, something I haven't witnessed in a very long time. 

When I was younger and camping with my family, my dad loved to wake us up wherever we were to see the sunrise. He'd poke my brother and me, and we'd begrudgingly crawl out from under the warmth of our sleeping bags, remove the pillows from our faces that blocked the very sun we were about to revere, and either walk, or scramble into the car, to go see the sunrise at some ungodly hour before 6 am. As I grew into a teenager, I often "passed," my dad going it alone, decreeing: You only live once.

After he passed, I often warmed at the thought of all those years ago, the thermos held tightly in my tiny hands full of the coffee he'd make I couldn't drink but loved to smell like I loved to smell his Old Spice. And this morning, I felt myself right back there.