i have recently unlocked something in my mind. i won’t say discovered, because it has always been there, so unlocked, unleashed is the better word. i have found the art of appreciation again. the gem that was tucked away for many reasons unbeknownst to me, or wait.. maybe i do know why it went into hiding but i shan’t divulge. let’s just say that many years of things deviating from your expectations almost to the point where to no longer trust your judgement could easily produce a cynic, but i wasn’t. i just shut that part of me that feels wholeheartedly away and sat. for a long time. sat on thoughts that boiled inside and troubled my mind. i wondered. wandered into uncharted waters, heart in hand and, to my own discretion and judgement, came out a better woman. i feel things, and realize things. my cousin and i came up with recently this recently, “my whole entire life is turning into a moment of clarity” and it couldn’t be more relevant. every single day, I learn which builds on my experience which then becomes a lesson i hold on to, my actions follow suit because of knowing better. it sounds so normal but up until recently, honestly, i hadn’t gotten that part down yet. it just didn’t click

though i am still single, i really am starting to see things in a completely different light. i am not here to preach to the masses nor am i to tell you all what to do, this is what I,  Hoda A. Essa, am learning about myself. what i have unlocked is the potential of appreciation, the part of me that loves someone deeply but consciously, unselfishly but protective of my heart, unwavering but removed. i have added conscious, logical and meaningful vocabulary into my love languages. you see, i believed love was something so far removed from reality, i believed that the person who claimed to have feelings for me could do NO wrong and that all people have a kind heart, and trust me - i still believe that most do especially from the start but there are some who just do not have my best interests at hand. look, i have grown in a household where we have grown together, started over together, cried and laughed together and so to ask anything less of a man i plan to be with would be blasphemous right? what’s the point of my parent’s pure efforts to make me into a woman of good sense if i just waste it on someone who gives me less then what they give? my family is my BIGGEST support system. i check everything in with them, and if i don’t, best believe i won’t hear the end of it. so i need someone, whose heart is home for me. who will check me, support me, inspire me, point out one another’s flaws and fix them with me, someone who will sit and watch a 3 hour marathon of the Cosby show with me, someone who is willing to dream as big, if not bigger than me. someone who will trust me and my decision making. someone who will give me room to be the woman i am and the woman i want to become and will nurture that. someone who has a genuine wide-eyed perception of the world, who will want to taste things, see things, feel things they never have before. someone who will let me fix them if they should break. someone who appreciates my HOOD. my good, my heart, my crazy ass laugh, someone who is like what I get at home, because that’s the only true love i’ve ever known.