I want you to fight for your shitty life. I watched the movie Gravity tonight and I just kept wishing Sandra Bullock had Melissa McCarthy's character from Bridesmaids in space with her to yell at her. "I’m trying to get you to fight for your shitty life. And you won’t do it, you just won’t do it." I was holding my breath waiting for her to stop being a victim stop letting life happen TO her and waiting for her to take the reigns. When at the end of the movie she stood I did too and with tears in my eyes. I'd find myself detailing the imagery to MP in a phone conversation about love. "What are you willing to lose?" She asked me once and then again ten minutes later. I didn't have an answer either time. What I did know was that heartbreak hurts. Like hell. But I can live through it. And, I asked her rhetorically, "if you wouldn't go through [hell] for love, what would you do it for?"

I recounted the rejection I felt that night when I mentioned sex to P2AD. We were too young, so I'm glad it didn't happen. But the sheer recollection of the conversation. The agony of speaking the words and the waiting. The silence. The heavy nothingness that weighed down my chest as I waited for his response. His suggestion to wait. I was devastated. I was humiliated even though it was just us two. And I learned a very important lesson that day, not to ever risk honesty because the consequence is rejection.

The thing is, sometimes life requires us to risk. In fact, over and over again we are asked to risk. We usually prefer low risk predictability but every now and again a leap of sheer faith presents itself and we get a choice to make. "What are you willing to lose?"

I am fighting to become the woman I want to be. Every day it's difficult because mediocre is so much easier than greatness, but I don't like the taste. Sure, like plain white rice, it would sustain you--but would you know pleasure? Not just of the sensual kind but of the spiritual kind as well. I am teaching myself to speak as she does. Carry myself in and out of rooms with her grace and poise. Manage her affairs with dignity and transparency. I am becoming her. And she needs me to let go of the nervous timid girl who believes so absolutely that she is not good enough.

She knows that rejection is part of the game and failure isn't a deterrent of success it is an integral component of it. She knows that we exist in shades of grey and everybody is faking it. She is confident and pulls at my spine when I want to curl up like a child. She is calling me to become a woman. So I'm fighting for her. I owe her the very best life possible. And the only thing I'm willing to lose is the thought that somehow: Im not enough for it. I cannot. I should not and that I'll die if I do.