Note To Myself - Tumblr Posts
People who change you
In life that there are two types of people who change you.
First is the people who come and make you mostly feel bad about yourself. Those people are the ones who make you feel like you are never good enough; who make you focus on all your flaws and imperfections. They become the reasons why you try so hard to change and become a perfect person, and worse - live only to meet their standards. But then one day you wake up and realize that no matter what you do or how hard you try to change, you will never be good enough in their eyes, because the real problem is not you, it is the people who always bring you down.
Second is the people who see the good in you right from the start they meet you. Those are the ones who see you as an amazing person; who always look the good in you and have your best interest at heart. Those are the type of people who water and nourish all the good and kind seeds inside of you, who help you grow each day and put more kindness in your soul. And then one day you realize that they are the ones who make you feel good about yourself and not only that, they also help you change to become a better person each day.
i think at some point in life you are going to have to grapple with the fact that nobody is going to just perfectly fit into your idea of them, and nobody is going to slot into your life without any uncomfortable bumps or rubbing of edges, and nobody is going to follow the script you want them to follow or thought they would follow because the people around you, shockingly, are not cardboard cutouts. at some point in life you WILL need to face the, surprisingly, real and messy interiority of other people. and you are going to have to learn to grant them the same nuance, agency and consideration you grant yourself, or want to be granted. and you are going to have to learn to make grace an important factor in what you say and what you assume about others bc i guarantee there is no shortage of grace being offered to you at some point in your life, and not in some transactional sense either but bc it is not that difficult to pause for literally 2 mintues and give people the space to be human and then just....move on with your life.
like i dont think it can be pointed out enough that responding and reacting are two very different things and it's a kindness to your future self to actually learn the difference.
for a second, you did the bad thing and bargained about it.
if it meant that you would never be numb like this again, what would you give up?
maybe it's the childhood stuff or the religious trauma or how your dad doesn't believe in medication, but this is how you are, right. you need to have a counterbalance. suffering has to have its own reward. there needs to be a point to it. and if you're happy - if you could just be happy, and the world could actually fill in enough space that the edges of your spirit actually meet the horizon of your body - you would need to pay for it.
your passions? that one seems fair, but how could you actually be happy without them. well, you'd never be numb again, so maybe you'd be able to find joy in the small things like you used to. gleeful, you'd make coffee and breakfast into an artform. you'd find a way to make it make sense, somehow. you'd move on. it'd be different, but it would be doable.
your lover? your friends? this would be hard. you owe so much to your community. still, you could maybe make yourself a small home in the woods. you could live a quiet life, one devoid of friendship - but also without this horrible grey mist. a life like bigfoot, then. you'd figure out how to make the most of it.
your hair. your teeth. all of it.
sometimes you are jealous of mental illness as it appears in media: a big stroke of a meltdown, a firestorm that resolves prettily in therapy. it is flashing lights and thin teenagers. you've absolutely had breakdowns that stole the show - but life after resolved into a pixel art of things you managed to piece together afterwards, not a tapestry of a heart made suddenly-beautiful. that people could pick up blades as if they weigh nothing, that the way it all appears is as a cry for help, not a slow backsliding.
you have to stop the thought: i'd give up everything.
but also - be real. you'd never give up your dog. nor your best friend. nor the way you feel walking while through deep fog. you'd never give up the last bonfire of summer, the reckless laughter of halloween. so you do still love things.
maybe that's the problem: you know it should be easier. you have everything you could possibly want. so how come you are still trapped? still yearning?
live. live messy and vibrant and warm and wholeheartedly. dare to embrace the parts of yourself that are confusing and complex and don’t come in pretty packages. let yourself accept the love and light you engulf others in. live and live unapologetically as yourself, the battered, bruised and muddled parts included.
a gentle reminder that people care about you and love you. you aren’t annoying and people enjoy your company and want to be around you.
okay guys, I figured it out. the point is to not let sadness prevent you from doing what you want, even if it's really hard some days
Sometimes I think about my best friend in my 20's response to when I told her I was envious of how talented and skilled she was cause she was always the friend that was doing a million new hobbies and just really had it together in my eyes and she seemed so disappointed in me and said how she's always been perceived as "talented" for things she was not a natural at and had actually worked tirelessly hard to learn to do and how it's never a compliment to assume someone has something you don't simply because they got lucky because more often than not they were just as capable as you and just chose to take risks, dedicate time, push through discomforts or doubts that maybe you succumb to, and really earned things that are often nonchalantly disregarded by peers as having walking in with already in hand
And I feel like that conversation really changed me cause I've always been bad at school and been a slow learner so I just sort of decided I wasn't smart and it wasn't my fault I wasn't born with the same advantages of people around me and I think that's something we all do as self protection from the truth that the only thing truly keeping us from what we want is usually ourselves and our decisions about our own narratives that aren't actually in stone even if we see them that way
I realized my friend was actually just not a quitter, and that she also felt not good enough often but decided to keep going in times where I know I would have stopped in her place
And I feel like taking ownership of my life a lot in the last few years has made me understand her better, even with stuff like chronic illness that practically begs us to victimize ourselves and then that way of thinking makes us sicker and more dependent on others when we could be accepting help without considering ourselves so helpless
It's really weird interacting with anyone once I've realized so much of that because I see my old self in people when they talk to me like I have something they don't because I am finally making different choices than I used to and honestly it is very irritating regardless of intention
If you want something someone else has that doesn't give you permission to assume how they got it or what it is even like having it - and I think more and more people have decided it's not their fault how they are choosing to live and that's why they are so stuck
you have to stay alive. you're going to be such a beautiful middle aged freak. young freaks will see you in the street and know that things can be okay.
hey man I found a piece of your soul stuck in the text messages of old friends you don’t speak to anymore. do you want it back
Day 14: Humanized
Don’t dare to bother his boyfriend.