A/N: Hey guys! Back with another one! Hope you like it!

One night, filled with frustration and hate, she takes a pen to paper and makes a decision.

The pen glides over the paper hastily, messy and devoid of any order or perfection. A part of her finds satisfaction in that it accurately matches the state of her brain at the moment. She looks at it after she's done, eyes scanning a list of all the things she wants to be and all the things she's not.

It's a mixture of abstract and achievable yet overall overwhelming enough for her to put it to the side with a vague hope that maybe one day she'll get through it.

She makes a decision to try anyway.

A decision is only the beginning of things.

So she goes about her life, that decision lingering in the back of her mind as she tries for better at every turn.

But has she been trying enough? What even is better? How will she know—

"Excuse me." A voice to her right startles her out of her thoughts and she realizes she's been staring at the shelf in front of her and not moving when he's clearly trying to get through.

Immediately, she takes a step back. "Sorry."

"No problem," he relies cheerfully. "I promise to only be a second."

"Take your time," she finds herself saying, trying to shake away her thoughts as she regains a hold of her shopping cart.

"Done, thanks." He turns around to flash her a smile. It's a pretty smile. He's pretty. And nice.

"Are you okay?" he asks. She feels her face heat up as she realizes she's been staring again.

"Yeah…sorry," she repeats, quickly looking away.

"It's okay, have a good day!" And with that he walks away. She watches him turn around the corner to the next aisle.

And then she's left staring at the jars of pasta sauce in front of her again.

He'd asked if she was okay, god, she must have looked like an idiot. Shaking her head, she picks up the pasta sauce and puts it in her cart.

She really is okay too, she thinks as she walks down the aisle. Better than she was before anyway, she's got no clue why she was so spaced out earlier.

Vaguely she walks to the register. It's not till she hits something solid that she's broken out of her thoughts yet again. She's brushed against the cart in front of her. The one that just happens to belong to the same guy as earlier.

"I'm sorry," she says automatically as he turns to her with a smile.

"No problem." Amusement covers his tone.

"We need to stop meeting like this," she manages to joke, hoping to cover up her embarrassment.

Later that evening, she's looking through her nightstand when she stumbles across that piece of paper. The one she took a pen to six months ago and reads the scratchy writing detailing all the things she wants to be and all the things she wasn't.

Scrambling for a pen, with awe and wonder in her heart, she slowly and deliberately crosses things one by one off the list. Once she's done, she looks at the neat lines striking out the messy words.

It's not perfect, she's definitely not done, but she's closer than she ever thought she would be. The thought is electrifying and, strangely, scary at the same time.

How did she arrive here? How did she get to today and realize all of a sudden that she's ten steps closer to that dream life, that dream self, that she's always wanted?

They say when you strive to become better, everything around you gets better too.

As she lays down with those thoughts swimming in her head, she turns to look at the receipt with a number scribbled on it laying on her nightstand and thinks they got it right.

A/N: So what did you think? This covers the concept of growth and how small actions that you might not even realize until you look back can build up until one day you look around and realize that you're so much closer to making it than you ever thought.

And once you're on that path, that trajectory of life, things become better around you too.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Please Review!

And as always, thanks for reading!

See ya! :)