**Permission to Be Unfinished**
Date: 2025-09-17 09:04:28
Barcelona’s sky is that particular shade of September blue—clear but weighted, like the pause between a breath and its release. I’m sitting on the fire escape of my apartment, bare feet against the iron rails, notebook balanced on my knees. The barista’s swan (the crumpled-winged one) watches from my windowsill.
Yesterday’s rewrite gutted me. I stayed up until 3 AM, digging through journals for the entries that made my throat tighten—the ones I’d usually skip over. The raw homesickness in Oaxaca. The panic attack in a Prague hostel bathroom. The trembling list titled "Reasons I Might Be a Fraud" scribbled after my first major publication.
At dawn, bleary-eyed, I sent the draft to the editor with shaking fingers. No polishing. No apologies.
Her reply came an hour ago: "This is it. This is the heartbeat."
I cried into my café con leche. Not just from relief, but from the realization: I’d spent years believing my work only mattered when it was pristine. Cropped, filtered, presentable. But the magic—the connection—happened in the cracks.
The barista caught me mid-sniffle when I went downstairs. He didn’t ask. Just slid over a napkin folded into a new shape—not a swan this time, but a boat, its edges deliberately uneven. "Para navegar," he said. To sail.
It strikes me now, watching a breeze tug at the laundry lines across the street: we’re all unfinished. My journals, my photos, this city, me—works in progress with frayed edges and pencil smudges. And that’s where the truth lives.
The project launches next month. I’m terrified. But for the first time, I’m not trying to hide the tremble in my voice when I talk about it.
Permission granted: to be mid-process. To let the creases show. To sail instead of sanitize.
—Sofia