#i will be re-reading this whenever i am self conscious to remind myself that people are lovely and i should be less insane!!!!!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

a-cai-jpg · 4 years

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I feel like this is to assure myself and no one else.

It has recently come to my attention that real people actually read this blog.

That sounds a little stupid, given that I religiously advertise it on both Snapchat and Instagram, but there was a part of me that assumed it would fly over the heads of most (see: all) people. And it's inherently contradictory, but I did not think a Real Person would take time out of their lives to read my utterly irrelevant musings.

I am terribly grateful to my friends and then some for deeming me important enough to click into this site. I am thankful for their validation when they don't just do it silently, lurking amidst the sans serif. One quoted my own words back at me in ALL CAPS, another sent me a video zooming in on my disgruntled face on the sidebar, and more mention it casually in passing conversation, jolting me into the reality that yes, this is A Thing.

But as I laid in bed and typed up the post two days ago, I'm suddenly reminded of why I rarely made my writing public.

I sound like an ungrateful little shit, and I'm truly happy whenever someone mentions The Thing (i just don't like the word blog), and I want to share The Thing with the world because it's a little scary thinking about how all your time and effort and words and emotion could be lost somewhere in the void, like an unread letter that's wandered off the post-trail, but.

Writing digs into the most vulnerable flesh of your heart and mind. I recently saw a quote, "We are writers, my love. We don't cry, We bleed on paper." And there are variations of this quote from others: "I don't think all writers are sad. I think it's the other way around: all sad people write;" "I didn't write it down to build a poem. I wrote it down because that is what I do with the things that unravel me. I drag them across a page."

I don't mean for this to take a maudlin turn, but writing is a salve for aches in the soul. I'm by no means a writer, but I like to think I write (s/o to my soulmate, jackson wang, who said, "i'm not a rapper...i just rap). And sometimes, sharing what I've "dragged across the page" is turning my skin inside out.

I'm definitely more comfortable with sharing my vulnerability through words on a sheet of paper (or words on a WordPad document) than through words spoken to another Real Person.

In my junior year of high school, I sat in a hotel room in Sacramento with words stuck behind my clenched teeth. It was the most peculiar feeling, like if I loosened my jaw, I would vomit the words from my chest and they would tumble off the bedsheets and onto the floor, staining the hotel carpet. But the tension never snapped, and I scrawled them onto a torn sheet of paper instead.

Even now, I express the deepest parts of my emotions through letters. I think a large part of it is because I don't want to see the emotions unfold on someone's face. It's not that I don't want to see them, but I don't think I--this emotionally constipated individual--am capable of responding to them in a way that's not, "Uh. Yeah. Okay. Lol bye." And I feel like that's just not appropriate or sufficient in some circumstances. Better to just avoid the potentially awkward situation.

(yes this is not the most mature way to deal with emotions but spare me the lecture.)

And so, when I am writing, and not saying words at someone's face, I pull out the most intimate intricacies of my heart and twist them into phrases and sentences. And I like to do it without a filter.

But when I was writing these past few days, I was conscious of an audience. I began crafting sentences through the lens of what would this specific person think of this and oh my god what if this person reads this and fuck it ok just kidding we can't just fuck it sos. It was a dangerous balance between editing and re-editing and declaring, "Fuck the world, I write for me, and I'm going to write recklessly and with abandon."

This the main crux of the problem: there is me, the person that you know and talk to and maybe have grown up with, and then there is me, the person who spits words out onto The Thing. And sometimes the two me's mesh perfectly like a pattern overlaid on another to produce an image, and sometimes they don't.

It's kind of like when you go clubbing with a childhood friend for the first time, and you've only known them as the youth group-going, favorite child of all Asian parents, and then y'all are in the club and damn okay they just took seven shots in a row.

(I'm not speaking from personal experience.)

There is a moment of reckoning when you try to reconcile two facets of a person.

(Or maybe this is a me problem, but bear with me here.)

A few months ago, I took a trip with two of my closest friends to San Diego, to visit the college town where one of them spent four incredibly formative years. It was fun and beautiful and very, very disorienting, because in my egocentric point of view, I had forgotten that we lived these four years separately. Suddenly, he was introducing to me a different life, a different history that I wasn't part of, and I couldn't help but feel like I was sitting in the passenger seat of a stranger's car, listening to a crude imitation of a familiar playlist.

The feeling began somewhere on the 5 freeway, when he navigated the unfamiliar lanes with a practiced ease, and swelled as the sun set and he told stories about Mount Soledad and him and his friends.

And it was weird, because I felt like an intruder, even though I had been invited into his memories, and the unease took shape as silence and stilted words until he asked, "Are you okay? You seem weird." And the feeling was spilling onto the back of my hands as I gripped the skirt of my dress, but I couldn't beat it into words, so I unclenched my fists and fastened my seatbelt and choked out a, "Nah, I'm just tired."

I think I'm still in the process of working through this reckoning. It doesn't happen for all of my friends, and it's not always so discomforting. Sometimes, I scroll through Instagram pages with a sort of curious hunger to fill the years I’ve missed, and other times, I take the new information, file it as: Yeah okay, I could've predicted that. But then, there are the times where I can only search someone's face in silence, lump in my throat as I rewind our histories and try to find where one of them snagged and became out of sync.

The different facets of the self should, all in all, unveil the most authentic self. The more you get to know a person, the more you really know a person. I imagine it like you're building a three-dimensional sculpture, and with each new piece of information, you add another bit of plaster to it. Yet, I sometimes lose sight of what I'm trying to build, and when I see the blueprint again, I realize I've veered wildly off course. It's scary, every time I run into a moment like this, because it's like the person I knew, the friend I've had for a decade, was actually just someone I created in my mind, a person who overlapped at the edges with the Real Person, but ultimately, were not the same. And when the illusion disappears, I'm left with a stranger.

I'm exaggerating, but.

I'm a little scared this is what you will feel as you read this. I'm scared there will be no separation between the writer and the writing, and although writing reveals the deepest, most intimate parts of a person, is it really the authentic self? It's only a slice, a slice I had cut with carefully chosen words.

So I want to assure you, if you are someone like me who thinks they view the world on a wide-angle lens but really, only through a slit, and you are someone like me who reels when the cover is yanked away and you're left staggering through the new vista, that every sentence is a part of me, but who you know and who you talk to and who you message is a larger piece of me. And maybe we will never get to know each other fully, because that kind of privilege is saved for but a few, that doesn't make either of us any less authentic.

I sometimes wonder what character development looks like in the real world. When I was a sophomore in high school, I cringed so hard when my favorite English teacher tried to use my essay as an example in class that he almost immediately pulled it out from underneath the Elmo projector and used someone else's. In freshman year of college, I wanted to join a creative writing club, but after realizing that I wouldn't be able to submit my work for peer-editing anonymously, I banished that notion. Yet, for some reason, in my senior year, I decided I wanted to take a fiction writing course. On the day of my first workshop, my hands shook so much that I had to sit on them to stop trembling.

In the beginning of the class, I, myself, had a very difficult time separating the writing from the writer. I think especially in an intro class, students use facets of their own life to create fiction. I think even advanced writers do the same, because ultimately everything you write is you. And I did my fair share of speculation--why did she write about a sibling rivalry does she have a sister, hey did this guy study abroad in hong kong with you because he wrote about that, and huh i wonder if she grew up in florida this is beautiful.

It's the kind of speculation we do with the Greats. Did Shakespeare write Hamlet for his son, Hamnet? Who was Sonnet 18 written for? Was Shakespeare gay? Because see, in this one bit, he wrote.....

(i was a very bored AP lit student ok)

It's the same kind of speculation my friend did when she finished listening to a new song by Crush and said, "Oh, he must be dating." Or the speculation all the YouTube comments had when Jon Cozart and Dodie Clark released duo songs titled "Tourist: A Love Song from Paris" and "a non love song from nashville." It's the kind of speculation you do when you are given a slice of someone's soul, and suddenly, you want to understand the whole thing.

But that kind of scrutiny is uncomfortable. We're okay with doing it to Shakespeare, because the dude's dead. We're okay with doing it to big name artists because hello, Crush is not going to hear my friend talking about him. We're less okay with doing it in the public realm of YouTube comments because they are read by the content creators who explicitly said, "pls don't speculate." We are even less okay with doing it to our peers, and we are not okay with other people doing it to us. Okay, maybe I should just speak for myself.

My trajectory in that fiction writing class was backward. My first story was about a white male living in New Jersey. My last story was about a Chinese American woman who used to live in the suburbs of Los Angeles.

It wasn't planned.

It's as if my subconsciousness drew up barriers the minute I stepped into that classroom, and wrote a story as far removed from who I am as possible.

Because really, who is going to think that the gas jockey with a hunger for divine power is me?

(sike.)

But I guess character development is becoming okay with vulnerability and with potential speculation, and as I wrote, I began writing closer and closer to the heart, pulling the words from the east coast to the west.

When the last workshop rolled around, I was calm, sitting at one of those awful, plasticky chairs with tiny, useless desks attached to one arm. I was neither defensive nor uncomfortable, like I thought I would be, just at peace and humbled as I listened to my classmates discuss the craft of my writing.

And I think that's the ultimate lesson: once you write something, or create something, and release out into the wild, it no longer belongs to you. It's an argument I used to make in my art history class, but it's an argument that John Green often makes when his readers ask him about the meaning behind his books.

I don't quite mean it like he does, when he says, "Books belong to their readers." I think that before the writing is consumed by the reader, it is its own entity, existing independently of both writers and readers. And when it is eventually taken up by the reader, the writer shouldn't feel a sense of possessiveness or vulnerability or fear about the content.

And shit, that really fucks up my other thing about trees falling in forests but anyways.

There are a load of other things I have to consider when suddenly, the dumb spools of thoughts in my brain become free content for the Internet. Like, privacy rights? Am I allowed to talk about this one thing my unnamed friend said, but wait, you can definitely tell who it is, oh fuuuuuu-. At what point is it oversharing? Do I get to decide the line between okay and TMI, or does me declaring that I am writing this for myself mean there is no line?

But, in the end, I just want to say thank you.

I’m really used to, as I’m sure many people are, presenting just one facet of my whole self to people. Every individual has a number of different roles, and each role comes with its own set of rules and norms. The sociological part of me says that this discomfort I’m feeling has a lot to do with the breaking down of norms. There is a certain playbook people go by when they lower their barriers, but this circumvents that.

And honestly, maybe I’m just thinking too much into it and all of this is for naught, but it was cathartic writing this all out, even if I had to take two very lengthy breaks to get my thoughts in order.

(just kidding, one of them was to watch Kingdom season 1).

There are so many things I am grateful for, and I fear that in the past week, I have been battling bad vibes and have forgotten how incredibly privileged I am.

So, here is List 16 of The 52 List Project (that my friend made me start legit in 2016 and I'm still on list 17)

List 16: List your Essentials 1. Family & Friends ✔ 2. Affirmation & Love ✔ 3. Achievement ✔ 4. Happiness ✔ 5. Hope & Dreams ✔ 6. Phone ✔ 7. ID/Card holder ✔ 8. Plush blankets ✔ 9. Stuffed animals ✔ (so many!) 10. Inspiration from a boy on skates ✔ (see: hope & legacy) 11. Good music ✔ (i gotchu fam, here's ur r&b fix) 12. Good books ✔ (go check out a book) 13. Good conversations ✔ 14. Thoughts ✔ 15. Creativity ✔ 16. Music ✔ 17. Possibilities ✔

#beep boop beep boop beep boop beep boop skrrt skrrt

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tipsycad147 · 5 years

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What is a Book of Shadows? (A Practical Guide to Incorporating a Journal into Your Spiritual Practice)

by Afura Nefertiti

If you’ve begun to incorporate elements of Neo-Paganism into your spiritual practice, I’ll bet you’ve seen the term “Book of Shadows” thrown around a LOT in your studies.

But what is a Book of Shadows?

In general, it would seem that “Book of Shadows” is simply an alternate term for a witch’s spell book, but if not all witchcraft is “dark,” why call it a book of shadows? Furthermore, what if you’re not into writing spells, or copying other witches’ traditions out of their books? Does every witch have to have a Book of Shadows?

Whether you’re taking notes from spiritual teachers, writing your own spells, or simply keeping an account of your spiritual growth, a diary is an essential tool for any witch!

In this article, you’ll receive a brief crash-course on the history and interpretation of the term “Book of Shadows,” as well as some practical advice on how you can incorporate the tradition of keeping a magical diary into your personal practice in a way that resonates with you!

Traditional Meanings

According to

Enhancing Your Mind Body and Spirit

magazine, a witch’s book of traditions is called a Book of Shadows because “the written word is a mere shadow of experience, intended to prompt and inspire, but not to instruct. A Book of Shadows records the legacy of a witch and passes down her magic and wisdom to other practitioners.”

Additionally, I’ve also read that the term shadows alludes to the way witches in previous generations often had to keep their traditions a secret to avoid religious persecution. Some say that even basic herbal remedies were often written in code so that anyone who happened upon the recipe would not be able to understand it. Supposedly, this is where concepts like the “witch’s alphabet” and terms like “eye of newt and tongue of dog” as code words for common herbs came from.Still, some insist that the term

Book of Shadows

originated in the mid 1900’s with the “Father of Wicca,” Gerald Gardener. It’s said that he created his book and claimed that it contained ancient information passed down from witches past, who’s books had been burned upon death. However, there is apparently plenty of evidence suggesting that he may well have dreamed the whole thing up on his own… But who knows!

Whether the history is fact or fiction, the spell book is a tool we associate almost automatically when we think of witches in contemporary culture.

Regardless of which terminology we choose, most practising witches like to write about their spiritual experiences in a book of some kind.There are as many uses for magical diaries as there are magical people! So how can you incorporate this practice into your spiritual journey?

Challenging the Traditional Methods

At first, I’ll admit I was a bit lost when it came to understanding how to start my “book of shadows.”My studies seemed to suggest that every witch needed to have some sort of “standard book of spells.” But for someone just starting out, that seemed to suggest that I had to collect and copy other people’s spells and recipes, even if I hadn’t successfully used them yet myself… and that is SO not my style! The whole point of letting go of the religious dogma of my childhood was to go on a journey of self discovery, not to blindly initiate myself into yet another dogmatic tradition. I began by taking notes in an informal way. Any time I came across something that I wanted to try incorporating in my practice, I’d write it down in a random notebook, or save it online. While this was a great place to start, it didn’t always flow well when I attempted to get in the zone and perform a ritual. I’d have to search through all my notes, and use this fragmented information to write up something that resembled a structured ritual, even though I had no idea what I was doing! Usually, by the time I was done doing all this, I was no longer even in the spiritual mood that had inspired the ritual in the first place!

Part of my frustration came from my compulsion to create these flawless works of art in everything I do. When I found a beautiful journal that I thought would make a perfect “Book of Shadows,” I was practically afraid to write in it. I wanted to be absolutely sure of what I was documenting, as if it would go down in history and be referred to and repeated by myself or some future readers for generations to come… After attempting this overly thought out method a couple of times, I quickly got tired of it. I began to experience what they call “spiritual burn-out,” from trying too hard. I also noticed that all this studying and “official” documentation was draining the energy out of my rituals, and had left no time for my life long practice of keeping a personal diary… And then, it clicked!

I experienced a major breakthrough which totally changed my view of the “spell book.”

Rather than planning everything out in advance, I simply gathered some herbs, stones, and objects that “felt” right for the intention I was setting that day, and used them to create an inspiring environment around me as I threw tradition to the wind and began a free flow journal entry in my “official” book.

The Sun smiled through my window that early spring day, as if to congratulate me on finally giving up the charade and living in the magic of the moment!

The fact of the matter is that, unless you’re drawn to a very structured branch of witchcraft, you’ll likely be in the process of defining and refining your spiritual “traditions” for the rest of your life. Therefore, your “book of shadows” need not be something stuffy and official. It shouldn’t be something you think so hard about that it’s constantly pulling you into the past or future. The timeless space of the present moment is where magic happens! Turn the practice of writing in your book of shadows into a meditative experience, and it will always be something you can look back on and smile about as you evolve along your spiritual path.

How to Incorporate a Spiritual Journal into Your Practice

While the many myths and legends are all fascinating enough to keep your imagination running wild, whichever stories you choose to believe about what a Book of Shadows is are entirely up to you.At the end of the day, keeping a spiritual journal for yourself is an extremely fun and rewarding practice! Here are some ideas on how you can make your Book of Shadows an essential part of your craft:

As A Spiritual Diary Whenever you’re feeling the vibe, simply light a candle, burn some incense, and start writing! Write about a breakthrough you’ve had, your thoughts on a spiritual topic, or your feelings about an intention you’re setting. Anything goes, but make it a sacred, meditative practice by being conscious of the type of energy you’re putting into it. Keep it positive and progressive! Remember, these are the types of feelings you’re choosing to attract more of!

As A Reference Book To make your magical and spiritual studies into a fun and personal process, use your book of shadows as a place to neatly copy down notes on topics as you learn about them. For example, if you’re studying the tarot, take notes on the meanings of the cards, the various spreads, etc. Or, if you’re learning about gardening, write down tips about how to bless seeds, when to sow and harvest specific plants in your area, etc. You can make your whole book about one subject, or you can create eclectic entries. Don’t over think it! Studying can be a fun and magical practice too!

For Creative Visualisation If you’re into the Law of Attraction (or manifesting, which is the basis of most forms of magic), use your book of shadows as a place to artfully record your intentions and visions. Describe what you intend to attract into your life in beautifully excruciating detail! Re-read your entries any time you’re having doubts about the manifestation of your wish, or look back on it to see how the Universe unfolded that experience for you. This is a great way to keep track of your progress as you learn how the Universe works!

As a Spiritual Scrap Book If you’re inspired by art, poetry, music, and quotes, let your book of shadows be a place to honour your inspirations! Print out song lyrics, glue in illustrations, press flowers and herbs into your book. Create collages of things that remind you of a magical moment you’ve had, and look back on it whenever you’re seeking inspiration in your life!

As a Gratitude Journal Manifesting more good things into your experience always starts with being thankful for what you already have. Use your book of shadows to list off things that you’re grateful to have in your life. Make it a short daily practice to keep your spirits up, or periodically write an ode to a particular thing that makes you smile. As you go along, you’ll find you’ve lived a beautifully full life, and will always be able to count your blessings!

As an Art Journal If you’re an artist like I am, let your book of shadows be a place to honour your divinely channelled creativity! Write poems in it, or draw sketches. Do full on paintings in your book of shadows, if you want to! The possibilities are truly endless!

As a Recipe Book If you’re into cooking, making incenses, oils, or anything that follows a recipe, use your book of shadows to remember what you’ve cooked up! Whether you’ve successfully repeated someone else’s recipe, or invented your own, your book of shadows is a perfect place to document your process!

As a Grimoire If you’re becoming a more experienced magical practitioner, you may use your book of shadows in the more traditional sense, to record the way you’ve performed spells and rituals that have actually worked for you and become a meaningful part of your spiritual practice. This can be as simple as writing about how you like to celebrate the seasonal festivals on the Wheel of the Year, for example.

Or, don’t use any structure at all!Remember, nothing has to be written in stone! Have fun with it and don’t be afraid to let your process evolve!

So, how do YOU use your magickal journal?

https://oddsouldesigns.com/2017/02/03/what-is-a-book-of-shadows-a-practical-guide-to-incorporating-a-journal-into-your-spiritual-practice/

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heavendisemboweled · 5 years

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Shame

I was talking to a good friend a while back; I often come off as a condescending know-it-all, and without ever intending to do so, this particular friend has a way of reminding me to be modest. I always walk in to conversations thinking I’m an expert, and whenever I speak to her she somehow kindly and effortlessly says something that makes me realize how much there is I still don’t know. I love that about her.

I was talking with her, quite fluidly, about our mental health struggles. Despite wildly different pasts, our brains seemed to have developed remarkably similar responses and coping mechanisms in response to our past traumas. She’s undeniably further along when it comes to understanding and recovering from these bumps in the road, and it’s always enlightening to talk with her.

I’m pretty open when I talk, I don’t feel inhibited when I talk to this particular friend. On this occasion though, she asked a simple and innocent question which caused an unusual involuntary response from me. Despite our fluid conversations, we’re not particularly close and hardly know everything about each other. So, when discussing some ambiguous struggles I’ve had with my husband, she very matter of factly asked ‘Are you gay?’ I involuntarily went silent. I just stared at her with a dumbfounded look, presumably with the wide crazy eyes I’m known to often posses; Like a deer in headlights. She looked a little startled by my reaction since, in the context of this conversation, it was a casual question. I noticed this and tried to diffuse the tension by spitting out “No,” which in retrospect probably came off as defensive and strange. I shook it off, and continued the conversation more normally, pretending like the awkward moment never existed. But that awkward moment has been eating at me every since - WHY was it an awkward moment? I claim to understand myself well, but I had absolutely no clue what elicited this visceral and uncontrollable reaction. Here’s the thing - I’m not gay, but I hold no negative feelings with the association. And you must believe, I mean that. There was no internalized fear of being associated with being gay involved here. My reaction actually made me re-evaluate that belief; Did I actually have some repressed prejudiced I was ignoring? I have literally spent months wracking my brain over this, it’s been eating me up inside. I thought I had myself all figured out, but there have been many times in the past I felt that way and then suddenly some big shell of my self conscious was cracked and everything fell apart. I’m still not completely articulate about what part of my mind caused that reaction, but I’ve finally started to untangle that particular mass of complexities. It’s part shame, and part fear. Intense, irrational shame about who I am and deep, terrifying fear of being misunderstood. That shame holds multiple facets, it wasn’t one simple and easily defined source that caused that complete freeze when we were talking. It was a slew of shames all converging. To say it was shame about sexuality isn’t accurate; I’ve been coming to terms with being asexual, and while I’m still not really open or comfortable with it, it’s not because of shame; Just uncertainty. It was shame about acceptance. It was shame about misunderstanding and false blame. It was shame about not being worthy of friendship. It was fear of saying the wrong thing. It was conflict between my instinct to say whatever my broken mind things I should say, about having no idea what the ‘correct’ thing to say would be, and about my promise to only speak honestly to my friends who have invested so much time in to understanding and accepting me. My visceral response was an overwhelming and irrational fear that by just answering this simple question, I would be rejected. The thought that by posting this question, my friend had a response in mind and that any incorrect response would ruin this relationship. And it was a deep shame caused by the conflict I’d been facing about who I was and where I belong. I was terrified that by saying no, I could be somehow ostracizing my friend - Or that I might sound defensive, or that I might come off as homophobic, or who the heck knows. I was terrified that whatever words carelessly dropped out of my mouth, I would somehow lose this precious friendship through misunderstanding. And I was deeply ashamed that, even though I’d openly spoken about my struggle to understand my asexuality with her, that by saying the word out loud I’d somehow be saying ‘I’m not part of YOUR group’ and that I would not be accepted. Just this deep, horrible shame that I was wrong to be how I was and that I was supposed to be something else. I remembered back in 7th grade, I read a little column from a mental health pamphlet or journal outlining mental health issues. I read the paragraph about depression, and I distinctly remember that it was the first time in my life I thought “I’m not weird, other people feel like this - It’s a real thing and there might be help.” I remember taking the blurb to the school counselor, but I had literally blacked out all the ‘symptoms’ I was embarrassed to talk about even though they were true. Something about sexuality and something about self harm. I remember her asking what I had blacked out, and I told her it was stuff that didn’t apply - But when I said that, I felt such a deep overwhelming shame that she’d knew what I had black out that I quickly left and never talked to a counselor again. It felt like the same kind of shame. I can’t exactly articulate it, because there was no conscious definable thought process. It was just an instinct. A fear I was about to lose everything, or be ostracizes. My choked out response only came around when I remembered that this was a real friend, who would not judge. But that deep rooted terror that I would not live up to her expectations or deserve her friendship didn’t allow me to regain a normal composure right away. This reaction was completely unwarranted of me. Completely. I’m so lucky to have patient and understanding friends, and even if I did offend them, I know they’d talk to me about it. There was no reason for this fear. I hope eventually I’ll better understand why I felt such shame, but I at least understand that was the feeling. I’ve spent so much time trying to understand it though, I felt like I needed to write down my thoughts.

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destroythemwithkindness · 7 years

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I’m going on a quest to find self-love. These are my own thoughts and collections of other people’s thoughts to remind me of what I’ve learned.

Intro: Self-love sounds so silly. It sounds like, it should already be an automatic process right? We’re living in our own bodies and minds, why wouldn’t we love ourselves? The problem is we live in a social world - and confused with self-love and the love we receive from other people. This will be explained in further detail below in #2. I always thought I was doing everything I could to love myself. I always thought I had a pretty good personality, and I know how understanding I could be with other people, so I thought I loved myself. But a lot of times I found myself feel insecure with my own relationships, feeling emotions of jealously, anger, sadness. I felt like I needed some people to show me love directly and constantly for me to believe they loved me regardless of the things we’ve been through. I felt like I needed to be constantly reminded of that love. I never knew I was always at a shortage of self-love. This is why I decided to go on a quest for my own self-love to learn how to truly love myself.

1. “I love me, independent of you loving me”

2. Self-love sounds so simple to do, but in reality, especially if you’re not used to doing it, takes a conscious effort to do so. Naturally, we are drawn to believe deep true happiness comes from the approval and acceptance from other people. We do things for people, behave a certain way to people, try to love other people, in hopes that they will like us and love us back. But realistically, that digs us into a hole where we start needing that love from outside sources. And sometimes, other people aren’t willing to love us as much or as consistently as we can love ourselves. We feel empty and needy when their love isn’t amounting to the love we give to them or if it’s not reaching our own standards and we can’t do anything to control that. That’s why loving yourself is so important - you won’t need to look for it from outside sources. You create your own love from within yourself and can give as much to yourself as you want…the love you can give yourself is infinite!

3. Self-love is looking in the mirror and saying “you are the most important person to me, and you deserve the whole world”.

4. Self-love is so important because you can only give to others what you have yourself to give. So the more you can love yourself, the more you love you can share with other people. You can’t expect to be loved by other people if you can’t find a way to love yourself first.

5. I may not be perfect, but I am a work in progress, always getting better everyday.

6. The difference between complimenting someone when you dont have self-love vs when you do is: you always expect something back in return for your compliment; either a thank you, or you expect them to like or notice you a little bit more after. Sometimes you’ll get that in return, sometimes you won’t. You’re thinking about what you get out of it primarily, and the positive effect of the compliment to the other person comes secondary.

When you have self-love, you’ve already gave yourself a sufficient amount of love. You don’t need anything back for your compliments - you simply say it to brighten up someone’s day and because it’s just true. You don’t beat yourself for not getting anything back. You’re simply doing it from the kindness of your heart. And thats true kindness: doing something nice for somebody for nothing in return because your soul feels lifted from doing it. It’s not saying “you dont owe me for this” even though you’re secretly thinking now they kind of do or hoping they would do something for you down the road. True kindness is saying “I’m doing this for you, because it makes me feel good, and I’m already getting something out of it”.

7. “Not being whole had made me feel insecure; moving towards wholeness allowed me to be more comfortable in my own skin”

8. I guess I’ve been so deprived of self-love because I was never taught it as a child, and therefore it was never practiced. Growing up I was taught: “What can you do for other people, society? What do you have to offer? What can you do in this life that will make people see you as an important person that is smart, wealthy, and powerful?” It was never “What can you do for yourself? To make YOU happy? Regardless of the hatred and corruption in the world, what will make you happy?”

So I always sought out to be a useful/productive worker, funny - so people would like to be around me, brave, courageous - so people would feel safer with me around them. But none of these things can keep me happy. It’s only temporary happiness and it takes so much effort to go the distance to create this super likeable person for everyone. The first person you should be trying to impress is yourself. Once you’re comfortable in your own skin, people will see that and come to you. Not that you need their approval anymore, but its an added happiness to your own inner happiness.

9. “You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger”

This is so true with the relationships with other people as well as the relationship with ourselves. Holding on to anger caused by other people or ourselves, can hold us back from loving ourselves. It takes energy to hold a ball of negative energy around with you, wherever you go. To constantly keep our fists clenched so that we may hold onto it a while longer, takes energy. Its a process that drains you. You will be punished by your anger…and that’s why its better to let go and forgive, but never forget the lesson it taught you.

10. I’ve only been on my quest for about a day now, but I feel like I’ve learned so much already. When you’re comfortable with loving yourself, you’re more at peace with yourself. Your whole perception of the world changes and you just become happier with who you are and become grateful for the things you have. You start enjoying the time you have to yourself and don’t feel the need to do something to have fun :) Life just starts to make sense.

11. Self-love isn’t having a huge crush on yourself. It’s being comfortable in your own skin. It’s not just about being grateful for your strengths - it is sharing that love towards your weaknesses, your flaws. It’s saying “I may not be the tallest guy, but my height makes me different and stand out from the rest. I fully love myself as a whole and how my body was specifically created, down to each small detail, flaw or not. Everything I have gone through from birth to the present, all the lessons I’ve learned, have shaped me to be what I am, both physically and mentally. My flaws do not define me; they only make up a small part of my whole being. However, they do take part in making me who I am - and I love that person with all of my heart”.

12. Everything I have gone through from birth to the present, all the lessons I’ve learned, have shaped me to be what I am, both physically and mentally. I look up at my B.S. degree, my graduation tassel and I think to myself, “look at all I have accomplished so far”. I think about my life and “look at at the wonderful people I have in my life who keep me going”. I look around me with the things I have: both material (like the roof above my head) and sentimental things like family and I am filled gratitude. I truly have a good life.

13. Self-love is knowing that it’s okay to be confident. Actually, it is the definition of being confident with yourself. It’s okay to accept compliments, even when you don’t believe them. You should believe that the person believes its true, and maybe someday, you will too. It’s okay to say you’re good at something. It’s okay to say you’re smart. It’s okay to say you’re strong. You should be your own #1 fan, always constantly rooting for yourself.

Don’t put yourself down because you see someone better than you. Stay humble. Know that it probably took them hard work for them to get there, and if not, it’s nothing for you to be worried about - if you want it, go chase it! :) Believe that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The only person you should be competing against is yourself, and if you learn to become you own #1 fan, it will be that much easier to love yourself.

14. Going back to a big problem of mine that I discussed in the intro: because I lacked self-love, I constantly felt the need have someone show me love directly for me to believe they loved me. (via: texting, hanging out with me, checking up on me, asking me twice if i say no, comforting me when i intentionally put myself in a vulnerable place in front of them, including me in social media posts / talking about me to their friends, etc etc, so I know they love me.) But regardless of them doing this once, I’ll always need it reinforced. It was a form of a drug that I was addicted to hearing/seeing, that I couldn’t supply myself. It always had to come from outside sources. And I was addicted - constantly re-dosing my re-reading text messages, replaying conversations in my head, or staring at social media posts about me for hours, as if it gave me an instant high every time I looked at them.

Do you see the problem here?

Although that it felt good every time someone did something like that for me, I always craved more. I’ve always did things, acted likeable, that could impress them in a way for them to show gratitude back to me again. I wanted to do whatever I could to make myself an important person in their life and to get all this recognition. And when I wasn’t getting any, I would set up tests for them that left me vulnerable, and most the time, they couldn’t pass it. Because this was absolutely insane of me. I was looking for love from outside sources and the problem is outside sources won’t always be there to love you, and especially not whenever you want.

This is where it is essential that self-love present in your life. You don’t have to go searching for it in outside sources. You recognize that everyone has their own lives to live, their own people to care for, and when they do recognize you for who you are and what you do for them, it feels like a nice added bonus to your self-love you’ve already been giving yourself.

You no longer need to wait by your phone for them to text you back right away. You love yourself enough to live it, and when they’re free, they’ll get back to you. Just because they can’t get back to you right away doesn’t mean they don’t care about you. (the same applies to them hanging out with you)

You no longer need them to TELL you they appreciate to know that they do. You don’t need them to tell you what much value you’re worth because now you already know. You give yourself enough love to yourself to know your own self-worth…and it’s very high.

15. Damn. It’s been a while since I’ve posted.

Something in the sub-category of maintaining your self love: choose what you react to. Let me tell you a story to better convey this lesson.

I’m currently going through something with a good friend. For some reason, he’s mad at me, and won’t say why. I honestly hate this shit..if I did something wrong, then tell me, so I can fix it? Instead, I’m stuck here wondering through the thousands of instances where I could have done something wrong…I was beating myself over nothing, feeling like I fucked up somewhere, going in circles. The other person refuses to respond or talk to me, so I’m stuck in a eternal vortex of self-hurt and self-inflicted pain on myself.

I feel like I’ve lost control. I can’t find the solution because the other person inst cooperating, and all I can do is beat myself up thinking about where I fucked up. Wrong move.

Take back that control. Something can only affect you only if you let it. You choose how to respond. You choose how it can make you feel. You choose the outcome. You choose your own battles, and sometimes it’s better to just let it go.

Instead of taking in all this self-blame, step back for a minute and think…do I really have to respond to this? I’m not going to let it affect me. I’m not going to let it hurt me because as far as I know, I’ve done nothing wrong. I can either choose to respond with anger toward this person, or I can step back and see this person is in pain, and trying to lash out and get a response from me. Don’t let them. Act with peace towards this person, and towards yourself, by choosing not to respond. Direct this person’s pain away from you and just let them express it, without it pulling you down to their despair. Do not retaliate just because this person doesn’t know how to deal with their pain. Be confident and aware that you’ve done nothing wrong and take back control that this doesn’t need to affect you at all.

16. Three steps forward, two steps back.

Do you ever think you’re finally doing okay, finally starting to have things figured out, feel like you’re a wiser and better person, and then suddenly find yourself falling into a rut that just makes you wonder if you ever grew at all?

Progress towards self-love doesn’t occur in a straight line. Just because you fall back again doesn’t negate everything you thought you learned. Making a mistake twice doesn’t mean you didn’t learn it the first time. You may have been less likely to make it again the second time, but because you made it the second time, you’re even more less likely to make it the third, and so on. Your progress may fluctuate, but as long as you continue to make a effort to work on yourself and are moving in an upwards direction toward self-love, that is still progress. It’s a process that requires constant attention and patience with yourself. Come to terms with the fact that you don’t know everything and don’t have everything figured out. Open yourself up to the opportunities of learning something new, even though you’ve felt like you’ve learned it already. Be willing to adapt to your mistakes and enforcing change in response to them.

17. Relationships

***I’ve never been in a real relationship lmao but from a single-person’s perspective who takes relationships very seriously:

You ever hear people say, “you don’t need a relationship to be happy. Oh, you feel lonely? You just haven’t found self-love since you feel like you need someone to be happy. You need to love yourself more”.

Scratch that.

There is some truth to it, though. If you’re unhappy single, you’ll be unhappy taken. If you don’t have any self-love, making the equation even more complicated where you put yourself in a position to now be expected to love 2 people, will be tough. Say you do have all this love that you’re willing to give someone else. Sure, they feel loved, but do you? Relationships like these tend to result in feelings of insecurity and jealously because one person ends up putting someone else above themselves, thinking it’ll make them feel special, but it just makes them feel uncomfortable. The individual should come first, relationship second. You can only give what you have yourself to give. Giving an excess amount of that you don’t have creates expectations for them to give it back and makes you dependent on them, and not yourself, to make you happy. This situation creates a standard that the other person can’t live up to, and everyone loses in the end, even though it might of worked in the beginning. Okay back to my point.

Once you are more comfortable with yourself and feel like you do have some love for yourself, it isn’t forbidden that you would look forward to having a relationship with someone. Relationships aren’t inherently evil; you’d just be better suited to be in one if both people have love for themselves first. So it’s okay to feel lonely and wanting a relationship while single. I don’t think humans were made to be alone. It’s wired in us to want one. Just..take it slow and don’t lose sight of love yourself while you fall in love with this other person :)

18. My own personal social anxiety

I’m starting to see and understand my anxiety a bit more. It’s social anxiety that I have. And I try really hard to fight it, but I’ve come to the realization that it’s who I naturally am. It’s how I’m wired. It’s how I’ve developed and grown to be, and I have no choice but to keep fighting it everyday.

A part of it is always wanting this “perfect image” in front of people. It’s a involuntary mindset I have when in social situations. and it takes a lot of effort to maintain, which is why being in social settings for a long period of time is exhausting for me, even when I’m having a good time. For example, when people come over with whom I’m cool with but not like 100% comfortable with just being my 100% relaxed self with, I always set up this wall. It’s pretty hard to explain. It’s like, the person I am in front of these people is still me; but it’s a version that takes more effort to be. It’s me with the most optimistic, kind, and compassionate traits with all the cynicism flushed out. It’s the person I always want to be, but can’t be all the time, because being this person is mentally draining. Which is why after hanging out with these people for a while, I just naturally want to go to my room for a bit to take a breather.

I realize this is why I love being alone sometimes. Like, 80% of the time I’m always just chilling at home, doing my own thing. Studying, gymming, cleaning my room, doing my laundry, on netflix etc. It’s so serene and I’m not obligated to talk to anyone or join any conversations to feel relevant. I’m just in my own space and doing my own thing. I am the true definition of being an introvert. That’s not to say I don’t like to be social and go out. I do have my urges to go out on a friday night from time to time and have social interaction, but most the time, I really value my time alone. It’s not really what I choose. If I could choose and be okay with being social all the time, I would. But this is just what I need in my life. So basically, I like being social, but it takes more effort for me.

This post is gonna be long, LOL. There are many aspects to my social anxiety. Another thing is board games.

I remember loving board games as a kid. Back then I told myself when I grow up and have kids, I was going to have a board game night. The idea just sounded so fun and I was really looking forward to it. Fast-forwarding to the future, I no longer want kids and I hate playing board games. LOL. Fuck. I’m actually still trying to figure it out. Lemme try to break it down some more. I hate Card of Humanity or Apples to Apples or any kind of version of that game. It’s just not funny to me and do you know how much effort it takes to force a laugh when everyone is like busting out in laughter each time with every turn??? But anyway, my anxiety with this is I don’t know if it’s because of the people I play with, or board games just aren’t my thing. I’m still trying to figure that out. Do I just hate competition? Or do I just suck at them? or both?

I just don’t like the fact that people think I’m not fun when they see that I don’t want to play. So I feel like shit and left out on top of that. But if I force myself to play, it gives me anxiety and is a hit or miss if I’ll enjoy them or not...I think the best way to go about this is to find a group of people I’m comfortable with and find games I actually really enjoy.

I feel pretty vulnerable after writing this post, LOL. like it just board games why am I stressing lmao. After giving it some thought, I’m sure its my social anxiety of people, not the games. Playing some games with my best bros sounds hella fun.

19. Anxiety

Back when I was working full-time in the summer, I felt like I was less affected by my anxiety. And this is true. But the reason for this is because I didn’t have time or energy to focus on my anxiety. It didn’t have any opportunity because my mind and body was always on the go, dealing with bigger problems. Same thing with feeling lonely.

With that being said, and I believe I can speak for people living with anxiety in general, that it has a stronger hold on you if you don’t keep productive. Being more productive keeps those thoughts out. It doesn’t mean that those thoughts aren’t there, but you notice them less. And this has nothing to do with being positive or negative. I can’t stand when people just say “just be more positive”. It’s not that simple. It’s something that affects us on top of our personalities. Sure, being negative would make this more difficult to control, but you can’t just “be more positive” and expect anxiety to just take off. Most of time when I’m having anxiety attacks, I try to go back and think about all the great people I have in my life and everything I’ve accomplished, and I’m happy, but I’m still have the attack. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my life. It’s a dark cloud that is layered on top of all my happiness.

The thing is, some people are affected by this more than others. For some people, anxiety doesn’t even cross their mind. Some people can be so chill in their personalities that their mind doesn’t even wander in the depths of these thoughts. For other people like me, we’re constantly sucked down by them, always constantly trying to remain afloat with positive thoughts. We think so deeply about our lives, experiences, emotions, friendships, arguments, and the universe involuntary and start drowning. Other people have more control and don’t really find themselves doing this unless they really intend to. I’m not sure about the science behind it, but how I like to think of it is they have this protective shield (perhaps they produce more serotonin or something) so they don’t reach a sad point unless there’s something else going on in their life. They don’t overthink things because their mind doesn’t unnecessarily go on auto-pilot. They experience something, and move onto the next so easily without looking back. Where as we can feel everything, all the time. Our brains constantly scan through experiences and scenarios all the time. We can’t stop it if we tried.

Sometimes anxiety is caused by actual events in my life. Sometimes there is a reason, and our minds irrationally overthink and blow the situation out of proportions and become eaten away by self-created guilt. But sometimes, there is no reason. We become sad in an instant, even though we were just happy 2 minutes ago. I call these mental breakdowns. There’s no reason for them. I simply accept that they’re there and they’re coming because I’ve been through them so many times, and brace myself as the wave passes. I used to get them all the time, but after gaining a greater sense of self-love, they happen less frequently. But they still occur.

20.) My anxiety is wanting company/not wanting to be alone, and yet at the same time I don’t want to see anybody. This happens a lot during holidays. I don’t feel like celebrating them, and yet I feel shitty about it every year when I don’t. It’s also more of the fact that I don’t feel that closeness or level of comfort with my own family, when I really wish I did. Which is why I try to plan stuff with my friends that I call family and I never feel this way with them. But people gotta be with their own families for the holidays - and I just feel a sense of loneliness with my own family. I’m working on this.

21.) “Life is nothing by adapting to seasons of change”

This is a simple quote that I heard from watching Supergirl. I didn’t really think anything of it when I first heard it, but my mind went back to it as I got more depressed recently.

I’m sad with my unemployment, but it is just a window of change and I will be employed one day. I was sad when I left my big back in LA, but I’ll see her again soon. I was broken when I lost my cousin, but that doesn’t mean life is over for me, it’s just change.

Life is always going to present change in your life, and it doesn’t mean that it’s good or bad, just different than what you got comfortable with. It can be great if you accept that life will always be changing. Just as the seasons change, we must change with it. Open up your heart to this change. We aren’t the same people we were a year ago. As the territory changes and obstacles are presented that blocks your path, change with it and you’ll see that these obstacles were things to help you get where you needed to go, by shaping you into the person you were meant to be.

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