When I’m Me Again

What are you supposed to do on those days where nothing you do is enough. It’s not enough for your teachers, your friends, or most terrifyingly yourself. We have all had those days where we wake up and nothing goes right. It’s a mistake after mistake after mistake. In pop culture, there is the popular notion that when something or someone is toxic to you and your progress you simply cut it/them out of your life, but what do we do when it’s us that’s acting toxic. 

 

No one is telling me I need to lose weight except me. No one is telling me that I’m not smart enough except me. No one is telling me that I’m not enough to deserve love except me. No one is unaccepting me except me.

When I go to take a shower and the hot water hits my back, I feel overwhelmed in a way that I can’t explain. All of a sudden the weight of the world is crashing down onto my shoulders, and once it knocks me down I get scared I can’t get back up. I’ve tried yoga, focusing on my breathing, eating my favorite foods, not eating much food at all, falling in love, and taking a break from love to focus on me. However, there are times when I am the last thing I feel capable of focusing on. I will run around town doing errands and laughing with friends. Sometimes I’ll walk to the campus store, look around, and then not buy anything so that I don’t have to be alone with my thoughts.

 

Except, that’s what I really need most. I need to sit down by myself and just think. When I let myself actually be me, all of my problems shrink down. Every negative thought I have about myself has stemmed from something someone else told me. Even if no one is saying it anymore, there are still tiny echos bouncing off the back of my mind that make their way up as daily reminders that in some moment long ago someone else couldn’t keep their mouth shut. You don’t always remember the person who made you change the way you looked at yourself back in middle school. What you do remember is that you have never looked at yourself the same.

That little voice in the back of your head that keeps telling you that you are not enough is not your voice. We are always enough, and we never thought otherwise until someone else made us second guess ourselves. Sometimes in life, we fall apart, and we are so quick to try to pick up the pieces that we forget to flip them all over, separate the edges from the inside, and focus on how understanding how the picture works as a whole is more important than how fast we put it together.   

• confidence
• mental health
• self-love