the fall

she wanted to seek help but didn't know who to ask or how to ask them.  she turned to someone an ocean away in hopes that then her troubles would be far from her heart.

instead she ached for the piece of her that she had broken off and given away.

she tried not to think of the words she had sent but instead they plagued every waking moment.  but then they were so kind to her.  they were so so kind to her and she wondered how she could accept so much when she was so little.

and then they left.

she was stupid to think that they would stay forever.  she knew better now.  it wouldn't happen next time.

and she loved them still.  a part of her would always love them.

she just hated that she had given away so much of herself.  hated that she had been so foolish to believe that she could finally have a safe place.  a safe person.  hated herself for falling in so deep.

on beauty

I've been having a lot of thoughts on this.  These days society has moved toward telling everyone 'you're beautiful! everything about you is beautiful so just love yourself! you don't actually have flaws!' and it's not that that's a bad thing, I think that it's a step in the right direction.  But I know that it has made it hard for me in some ways.  I know that there are parts of me that aren't nice to look at or beautiful or pretty.  But everyone is stuck insisting that these are beautiful.

I'm being vulnerable, opening myself up and sharing that there are things I don't like about myself, and someone is just shouting over me, saying 'you're wrong!  Your feelings are invalid because I see things differently and you should feel the same way as I should even though we are strange and complex and we can't choose how we feel!'  And yeah, that kind of hurts.  If I could easily change the way I saw myself, wouldn't I?  But not only does it make me feel like I should pretend these things don't exist, it also means that I am ill-equipped to work through these problems I'm having.  I don't know how to deal with the fact that I don't like parts about myself because everyone is saying there are no parts to change. And if I can't focus my dislike on any particular part, sometimes it just becomes all-encompassing and I just hate hate hate myself.  I hate my appearance.  I hate my personality.  I hate that I can't change this.  Everything about me.  I'm the worst version of myself that I can be.

And yet I still find myself fixated on parts that I don't like and maybe that particular part might not be attractive, but that doesn't make me as a whole unattractive and I want to learn to accept and believe that.  But here's the thing.  Me being unattractive really shouldn't bother me.  I wish it didn't.  But it does.  And now the question I have to think about is how can I respond to this?  Where does this comes from?

Maybe my face isn't great.  Maybe my cheeks are too round or my smile isn't symmetrical or I'm just not that nice to look at in general.  But this doesn't make me any less lovable, intelligent, worthy, or capable and that's something I have to constantly remind myself.

I often wonder why I find myself caring so much.  And I always return to the same thing.  I think it comes down to an underlying fear that I'm not enough.  That nothing I can do is enough.  And that's really scary.  To be constantly judging myself and always always always coming up lacking.

There's a small part of me that likes this though.  Likes hating myself.  Cringes away from the times that I look in the mirror and don't mind what I see.  And so even though I read tips on improving body confidence and even though I know steps that I can do to get to a place where my mental health is better, I don't.  I don't want to.  And I don't know why.

This past summer, I heard a girl say something to her friend that really resonated with me. "You don't need to be perfect.  You just need to find someone who will take you as you are."

There's no winning in this internal game that I'm fighting against myself.  But at least now I'm trying.



This was a bit of a mess, but I'll let it go for now.  Merry Christmas!

original #3 | a response

This is a bit of writing inspired by a song that a friend of mine wrote.  Or rather, this is what came out of how I felt when I listened to it.

If you would like, here's the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLvjo7cDJHw


I saw it as about two people that are together but alone.  One of them, the lower notes, is sitting.  Waiting.  Wanting something better in life, but not sure where to find it.  And the other one is searching for something better and hopeful and sometimes things get better, but ultimately they're still stuck in this season of sorrow and they end up finding comfort in each other because they know how each other feels.  And they're both still sad, but they're sad together and that lets them feel less sad.

They're different because they've both been through different things and some of those things were bad.  Some of them were good.  Some of them they don't talk about.  All of the things shaped them and they wouldn't go back and change anything even if sometimes all the time they want to.

Sometimes the sadness just swallows both of them though and that's okay.  Because they are still together and they know they will always still be together and yeah, it sucks.  It sucks that they have to deal with this because they've seen that life is so good and so happy and they've felt it before too and now they're just so far away and they don't know how they got so lost or so broken or where they took the wrong turn.

And maybe they were never on the right path. Maybe there wasn't a right path because maybe they never took a wrong turn because maybe there was nothing they could do to avoid this.

But it doesn't matter because they're still here and this path that they're on, it's their path and they can't change that.  It would be nice to.  This path is full of hurt and it's hard.  Hard to stay afloat and hard to not lose each other and hard not to lose themselves.  But this is what they have and they still have places to go and things to create and people to meet even if it doesn't feel like it- even if they don't want to.

And they still have each other and sometimes that's all that gets them through the day.  The night.  The week.  The month.  Sometimes that's all that gets them through the year.  But they got through it and in the end that's really all that matters.  They go through it after all and they know that they can get through another day.  Another week.  Another year.

And at the end of it all, maybe they won't be stronger.  Maybe they won't have learned something new.  Maybe they will still be lost and maybe they will still be broken.  And maybe- maybe that's fine.

jam | on happiness

for as long as she could remember, the girl had chased after happiness.  as if, with enough effort and time, she could one day catch it and keep it with her forever.  she, like many others, made the mistake of reifying it, treating the emotion like an object that could be kept by her bedside and held close on dark nights.  she wanted to preserve it.  mimicking the way that she and her mother used to package the jam that they made, she collected her sweetest memories and placed them in jars that she created in her mind.  she labelled them 'happiness' and lined them up as a reminder that she had felt this way before and in hopes that she would feel this way again.

as time wore on, some of the jars were broken, some of them were spilled, and some of them were simply lost in the messiness and busyness of life.  the girl found that it was becoming increasingly difficult to replace her jars.  there were cold spells and seasons of melancholy that made growth hard and she slowly began to forget the recipe for happiness.  it seemed that the harder she tried the find it, the more distant the elusive emotion was.  she searched and searched and searched, and was occasionally rewarded by kind words or a warm embrace from a loved one, but the moments were fleeting.

she kept living.  like clockwork, she dragged herself through the monotonous motions that were expected of her.  she tried to practice collecting happiness.  she filled countless jars of jam, but they were made only to be sold.

the week before her 20th birthday she sat on the side of the road.  the chair she used was worn and rocked, its legs unbalanced by the grooves that had been carved by the recent rains.  the jewelled glass that held the jams reflected the setting sun.  its candy colours and the faint smell of  strawberries reminded her of the carefree childhood she had had.  she had not lived the life that she had dreamt of.

she knew better now.  she no longer blindly chased after happiness.  she had learned that happiness is not a thing.  unlike the jam that she was so familiar with, one cannot make or keep or buy or sell it.  rather, it is the product of an experience, something unique to every individual.  one must be patient.  happiness comes and goes as it pleases, never staying in one place for too long, but never leaving the girl to fend for herself.  begging and pleading it to stay only served to scare it away.

swept away in the clutter of her thoughts, the girl was startled to find a presence by her side.  like an old friend, happiness settled in the empty seat that he mother used to occupy.  the girl smiled and slowly raised her hand and rested it on the table in front of her, palm facing upwards.  it was an unspoken thanks and an invitation for happiness to stay, even if only for a little while.



hello!  this is a little piece that i wrote a long time ago, but felt like sharing.  i hope that you liked it.