27. The Most in Love I Have Ever Been

This week, out of solidarity for the one-year anniversary of the Pulse shooting, I'll be posting something each day about love.

The winter of 2014/2015 was one of the best times of my entire life. I have never in my entire life been more at peace with who I was a person, my body, the people I was with, or my faith.
      All of these tie in together with me having started to wear hijab the summer of 2014. With that, I had somehow stopped caring about how thick or thin I was, what the number on the scale was, or what size jeans I bought. While I stopped scrutinizing my body, I poured great amounts of effort into my clothes and how I wore my scarf. This might sound counterproductive, but swearing off sweatpants in public was one of the best things I've done for myself.
      Just as well, it took that physical change for me to really look deep within myself and understand what kind of person I was. I enjoyed being around people and found solace in company. I wanted to be around smart, open people who made me better in every sense. And that's exactly who I found.
       I joined the MSA and found myself becoming friends with people I had never imagined having anything beyond religion in common with. I was meeting people who were older than I was, and cared less about what people thought, but cared about me as a friend in ways that I hadn't known. There are few times in my life where I think I have learned or thought as much as I did in those few months.
     Perhaps it was the novelty of that time, which has now spun itself into nostalgia that makes me look back on it so fondly, but there certainly was a combination of ease in my friendships, faith, and self-esteem that stuck out about that time.       Of course this was just a short rundown of a lengthy period of my life, but a glimpse at all the little things that fit together to make that time great is key to having each day play out like a personal romance.