I saw a girl with chipped nail polish today and it sent me into a spiral.
The best kind. A glittery pink, half worn away, and she was just walking around living her life completely unbothered by it, her hands catching the light every time she moved and I thought that is such a specific kind of unbothered. The kind that only exists when the biggest thing on your mind is whether to touch it up or let it go.
I get ready every morning and before I leave I take one last look in the mirror. Outfit. Hair. The tiny adjustments nobody else will notice but I will. And for just a second, before the day asks anything of me, I feel like myself. Completely, quietly, just a girl who likes what she is wearing and is about to go outside in it.
I love that second.
And standing there today I thought. Does she get that?
The girl in the war zone. The one I think about more than I can explain.
Does she think about nail polish? Does she have a favourite colour or did colour become irrelevant the day the world she knew stopped existing. Does she stand in front of anything reflective and feel, even for a second, just like a girl who likes what she is wearing.
Or does getting ready mean something completely different where she is. Not which outfit but whether there is one. Not does this colour suit me but is there anything left that isn't torn, isn't dusty, isn't the same thing she has been wearing since the day everything changed.
I think about new clothes sometimes. Not because I need them. Just because something catches my eye and I think that would look good on me and the thought alone is fun and costs nothing and I love that it costs nothing.
Does she window shop in her mind? Or has imagining things she cannot have become a cruelty she has learned to protect herself from.
I am twenty-three and I think about the woman I am becoming in this delicious open-ended way, like flipping through a magazine of possible futures and thinking maybe that one, or that one, or maybe something I haven't even seen yet.
Does she flip through that magazine?
Or does twenty-three feel like something to survive to rather than something to dream toward. Does she let herself imagine her thirties or does imagining that far feel reckless when you do not know what next week looks like.
I had strawberry ice cream last week just because it was my favourite shade of pink.
Not because I was hungry. Because it existed and I wanted it and the wanting was enough of a reason and the world said yes without me even having to ask.
I like stickers. I like the last look in the mirror. I like glittery things that catch the light. I like wanting small soft pointless beautiful things and having the world just give them to me. Casually. Like it is nothing. Like of course, here, it is yours.
Does she know that feeling?
Does she still let herself want things that small. Or has she learned, the way children in wars learn everything, quietly and completely and too young, that wanting is a luxury the world has not budgeted for her.
She is somebody's daughter.
Somebody's sister. Somebody's girl whose laugh they know by heart, whose favourite colour they know without being asked. She has a favourite shade of something. She has a woman she wants to become. She has small particular joys she should be allowed to love for absolutely no reason.
The only difference between her and the girl you love most in this world is the ground they were born on.
That is all.
Your gift today is the world saying yes to a girl who has only ever heard no.
Give her the second in the mirror.
For every girl who deserves chipped nail polish,
Hafsa