14 September 2024
Lots of stuff on my mind lately, so I am just braindumping.
A Shift in Perspective
Yesterday, ㅎ_ㅅ and I were walking to our school’s ceramics studio, when an orange leaf fluttered to the ground in front of us.
“It’s really Autumn, now.” I thought out loud, and the leaves crunched under our shoes. It was nice.
I have been thinking a lot lately. I’ve been thinking about how I am shy, how I struggle to talk to others, and how I am a weird girl. Forgive me, as I will be using "weird" in every other sentence from here on.
These thoughts constantly consume me: how weird I am, how embarrassing I am, and how I’m not good enough for this and that. I feel like I spend nearly every minute of my day thinking these things, even if it's passively in the back of my head. It almost feels like OCD again, and as I write this, I’m realizing maybe it is my OCD. That actually makes a lot of sense.
I’m beginning to heal just a little bit. Instead of feeling ashamed of being weird, I’m deciding to embrace it. Thank you, Chappell Roan and Nora Fawn. Like them, I am in a very conservative community, where being queer, in any way, brings shame. Hearing Chapell Roan saying, "For a long time, I've felt like I'm on the other side of that. Just because I'm a freak, and like, whatever...Freaks deserve trophies, too.” And then seeing Nora talk about her own experiences as a “weird girl” who always wanted to be that kind of girl just hit me.
Instead of hiding their “weirdness” from others or being ashamed, they embraced it. It was really healing to realize that I could embrace my quirks, instead of constantly shaming myself for them, and letting people shame me for them too. With this realization, I feel like I am entering a new chapter in my life. If I’m going to be this way, I might as well love myself throughout this journey of growth. When other people don't like me for being me, it'll hurt, and that's okay. I live for myself, not others, and as long as I am kind, that's all that really matters.
I’m looking forward to waking up tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, practicing love for myself and my life.
Growing from Love
This is kind of an extension on what I was rambling about earlier, but I decided to give it its own section. I've had two goals on my mind lately, and that's been:
- Losing Weight
- Getting better at conversations
I've noticed that with these two goals, I tend to beat myself up whenever I do something wrong. Ate something unhealthy? Shame. Said something wrong or awkward? Shame. But I'm determined not to spiral into a bad place, like I am in right now.
Even though I want to lose weight, I will not look at my body right now and think about how much I hate it. I love my body as it is right now, and I'll love it after losing weight, too. I fear that if I start this journey out of hatred for myself, then I'll only ever hate myself. I'm scared that I'll fall down the rabbit hole of never being "skinny enough", just as I did in middle school. And so this time, I will begin this journey out of love. I'll always love myself, from start to finish.
To practice this, I wore a cute outfit yesterday, instead of telling myself, "I'll only dress the way I want to after I lose weight".
And then on having conversations. I'm really bad at them hahaaa... my mind always goes blank, or I'll accidentally cut people off, or I'm just really awkward overall. I have a tendency to cringe at myself over conversations, but I'm working on that too. If I'm going to be awkward anyway, I might as well grow through compassion, not shame.
I was talking to a friend of mine about this, specifically about talking to our professors. We go to a school where our future pretty much depends on them, so it's easy to get nervous around them. She told me, "I used to be that way, too, scared to talk to them. And I've seen a lot of people feel like that. They want their professors to have positive feelings about them, but they're also too scared to approach them in the first place. And then they never end up talking to them at all. Then your professors pretty much know nothing about you, and that doesn't help you either. So you might as well just try."
Just try. If you don't, you won't get anywhere. And if you stumble, that's just part of the process. I find it hard to put into words, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that with progress comes failure, and the real sucess comes from picking yourself back up and learning from those mistakes. And that's what makes success so amazing. So don't beat yourself up when you stumble, learn from it and be proud that you went out of your comfort zone to stumble in the first place. It's an easy thing to realize and say, but to really practice it is hard. Nevertheless, just try.
8 September 2024
TW: In this entry I ramble about depression and slight suicidal ideation. I wasn't going to post it, but I think it'll be helpful to look back on when I feel hopeless.
Today I was consumed by overwhelming feelings of emptiness and the desire to not be here. I wrote a very long entry about it, both in my physical and digital diary. However, I have decided to force a change in my perspective instead of nurturing my negative emotions.
There was a thought that echoed in my mind today, one that I haven't entertained for two years now. Like a tide, it pulls me into a state of negative emotions and poor decisions, and it's hard to go against it. Nevertheless, I will try. We're all going to pass anyway, so why intentionally cut one's life short?
Earlier, I thought, "I want to die."
Then I realized, "And I will eventually, so I might as well make the most of what I have right now."
Life may feel meaningless all of the time forever. If that is something out of my control, then why try to change that? Life doesn't have to have an overall meaning for me to enjoy it. Earlier, I thought to myself, "What's the point of all of this if I'm just jumping from one fleeting experience to another?" Everything fades, nothing lasts.
Impermanence creates value. The one thing that is consistent in my life is this void in my chest, but I'm going to make the assumption that I can enjoy life even with this void. It's like a bee on your shoulder, maybe with its stinger inside of you, and you can never take it out. That pain will always "bee" there, but if that's the case, why not just try to enjoy life with it?
