I used to feel so debilitated being myself. So much so that I felt like I was stuck being me.
And it didn’t help that my parents created smear campaigns to anyone that would listen or that people would make first impression judgments, thinking I was the way they imagined me to be.
The way these “good” people not only believed what they were told, but actively participated in the debauchery is a level of sick cruelty I have no desire to ever understand or empathize with.
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I was so insecure and so desperate to be loved, to have people I could look up to and depend on, that I did anything I could to be liked. When I look back on it now, I still get shocked by it. These are not people I respect at all, but at one point, their opinion of me meant the world.
It was my oxygen. Until I learned how to be my own source of oxygen.
There were times I cared so much that I would cry until I couldn’t breathe, hoping one day, they would see me, hoping they would feel the pain they intentionally inflicted, hoping they would finally love me the way I needed them to.
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Then the stark reality of it all hit- maybe they had the capacity to love, but it wasn’t going to be me. What I needed was to be the person I needed most.
So, I torched the bridges that others burned, one by one. Some loudly, some in silence. Some in agony, some in happiness. And not once did I ever say to myself, “I shouldn’t have walked away from that person” or “They were the one that got away.”
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None of us are perfect. We all have judgments and biases. And yes, we can be douchy at times.
But it doesn’t mean we have to suffer being ourselves. We can like who we are while becoming the version of ourselves we daydream about.
We won’t like ourselves when we’re wondering why we can’t be a certain way, look a certain way, or mold ourselves into who others want us to be.
No matter how much we try to change for others, we will never reach their expectations. There will always be something else that we need to fix about ourselves before they’ll accept us as we are.
They get to feel like they’re holier than God while we’re left in the pits of hell, trying to climb our way out.
We end up lowering our standards for the same people who are incapable of raising theirs.
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Choose yourself- choose those quiet moments with yourself, choose the moments you don’t have to cry because someone doesn’t see you, choose the moments you don’t have to beg for someone to love you.
Nurture yourself- nurture the parts of yourself you don’t know how to love, nurture the wounds that tell you it isn’t ok to be yourself, nurture the thoughts that say you can’t, because you can.
Honor yourself- honor the wishes you don’t know how to speak out loud, honor the times you want to take back, honor the whispers that tell you to go for it.
I’ll see you soon…in the meantime, love yourself so much that even a Hallmark Christmas movie would be jealous.
