I've been severed in half. Don't jump out of your chair, it's not a dire situation no more, it happened some time ago already. Think the sawing mill was placed long before there was anything choppable on me, to be honest.
I was told beauty is vain and shallow. Worshipping it is somehow immoral. And it checked out for quite a long time, it's a cliche, all of the beautiful people fixated on themselves, unable to see and appreciate the rest of this existence, all of them are a cliche, so much so, the most famous story about them goes way back to ancient Greece. You know it, you know Narcissus.
Don't know where it comes from, but I have this need to be moral, I had it since ever, I believe. I could go on a whole other tangent about the possible motivations behind it, and many of the greatest minds we know of already took their time to do so, but I don't care about that today. Today, I care about beauty. I cared about it for many days gone by. Not so much about my personal appearance, even though that's a part of it, but, just in general. Beauty in the things around me.
Can you see it coming together, the way I came apart? This silly "love for beauty is shallow" belief got plastered all over my world. I accepted something, and that something shoved a part of myself deep into my shadow.

I've been feeling on the edge, like something isn't quite right. For years. Once I cleaned up my heaviest miseries, I could see it clear in the calm of my brand-new functional days, something isn't adding up. And I think I found it. I think I, actually, holy-fuckin-shit, found it.
There's not a feeling as etheral, untouchable, undescribable, yet durable and eternal, as the aesthetic emotions (though I find that name to be quite techincal for such a whimsical little thing). It's the exact opposite of misery, to bask in the beauty of the things. The leaves, the buildings, the greens and grays, perfumes, cooking, the smells, the flavours, well, I could go on. The experience of beauty reaches up into the light, where the brightness erases the edges, I cannot tell it apart from love. Art is a celebration of the existence, whatever it may be. It's me saying: "This means something to me". Harmony is what stands opposite to chaos, a configuration of reality capable of making sense to us, holding any meaning at all. That's what draws us in. I can understand you, and therefore you're beautiful.

I actually forsake all of that. Can you believe it? Can you see how grand it is? Can you tell from my words how my fingers just - flew across the keyboard to thread-out the portrait of my muse?
It's not a thing to simply make yourself up. Forsaking a part of yourself simply means you have less of yourself now. Can't just glue something on top of it.
I know better now. I know what beauty is. And it's beautiful.