It’s okay to feel things, and to feel them deeply.
To cry at the end of your favorite movie, to smile ear-to-ear when your crush texts you, or to close your eyes, lean your head back, and just bask in the sun.
It’s okay to feel excitement, to feel loneliness, to feel fear.
To feel anxiety, indecision, unexpected calm.
It’s okay to feel pain, to let it soak into your pores, into each delicate cell of your skin.
Allowing yourself to feel doesn’t mean you’re weak. Rather, it opens you. It makes you human.
To feel means that you are experiencing life. It means that you are letting yourself be a real person. A person with faults and flaws, expectations and emotions. A person that is capable of loving and forgiving, breaking and rebuilding, again and again.
To feel means embracing the ups and downs, accepting that you can feel hurt and happiness almost simultaneously. It means that wonderful, dizzying moments of joy will occur when you least expect them. It means that sh*tty things are inevitable, and that’s okay.
Wherever you are—right now, in this moment—embrace your feelings. Close your eyes and let your emotions consume you, cover you like a blanket, warm you from the inside out.
If you are in a moment of celebration, pull that close. Fill your heart, let it flutter.
If you are in a moment of darkness, let yourself be pulled down, weighted and heavy.
Let yourself find peace in the little things, laugh at the carefree moments, revel in the ecstasy of something wonderful and unexpected. Let yourself wallow in the brokenness of a failed relationship, the betrayal, the fear, the uncertainty of what’s to come next.
Let yourself be sad, for as long as you need. Then turn your face, once again, to the sun.
It’s okay to feel. To feel deeply. To feel intensely. To let your emotions control every part of you, even the parts that should be rational and poised. This life is too short to not experience things fully. Too short to not be true to the thoughts rolling around your mind. And too short to not be yourself—your good and bad and crazy and sullen and lonely and joyful and quiet and ecstatic self. 
