Letters To Myself - Tumblr Posts
“Old wounds resurfaced last night and they continue to plague me. But I refuse to speak of the grief I harbor in my heart. Loneliness is a disease I choose. Who can I blame for this illness but myself?”
youadan teddy // diary entry #56
i dragged my bones out the front door last week. now it’s time to heal: a thing that happens in its own time and can’t be rushed, only nourished. <3 // beginning to live
“The wound is not the size of your life”
first read on @exitmusicfrafilm’s post about 2023
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but please don’t break promises you make to yourself just because it’s you the promise is being made to. You told yourself you’d go on a walk with tomorrow morning? Do it. You said you’d set more consistent with your skincare routine? Make it happen. You promised yourself you would work on establishing boundaries regardless of who’s on the other side of them? Follow through with that. Don’t wake up the next day and go “well I don’t HAVE to do this” “it wouldn’t hurt to postpone this” “this isn’t a big deal” because it literally is. Every promise broken is another nail in the coffin of your self-actualization. It’s another major roadblock to developing healthy self-love and self-respect. Weigh promises you’ve made to yourself the same way you would weigh promises you’ve made to others.
from complex ptsd: from surviving to thriving by pete walker
youre weirdly obsessed with finding meaning
epiphanies.
A couple days ago, the revelation hit me. I finally made it to the life i was always holding out for. The weight of that realisation crushed me. I had so many dreams that were once everything to me... and I'd just let them go. I knew my circumstances wouldn't allow those dreams, and I thought I'd made peace with that fact. But seeing how achievable they all are now, it hurt. I was left questioning which version of myself was more me. Then, today, I had the second epiphany. There is no longer a time bomb. I am no longer trying to squeeze all my life's worth of living into four tiny years. I can breathe. I can learn. I can live.
Everything doesn't end now that I made it here. I will not spend this year in guilt or grief. I am going take care of myself. I will be sober, and stay sober. I will learn what it means to lean on others and how to do it. I will do the things I want to, even if I am scared. I will be in my bones more. I will journal everything (I'm not performing for anyone). I will learn my faith as it is, unfailing love. I will put kindness first. I am going to learn how to love others better, how to be a better friend, a better person.
I am dedicating this year to living. I hope to find missing pieces of myself in the cracks of early mornings. I hope to find new favourites in unexpected places.
I will find myself again, and this time I promise to take care of her.
this year I'm going to live.
my inability to articulate this cycle in a justifiable way has left me rotting.
i’ll have a month of sleep and no motivation. then out of the blue i feel better and i think sweet it’s over now. but it’s not. because now the switch has been flicked and the world is techno coloured, i have four brains running on crack, i’m not sleeping more than 7hrs a night, and all the things i want to do are impulsive and stupid. the bad coping mechanisms come back and old habits start up again. and i feel so energetic and have so many things i want to do, but energetic isn’t even the right word. it’s like electricity, but the overload light is flashing bright blood red. ideas escape my head. the colours become overwhelming and im left wanting to claw myself to skin and bones
i’m sick of thinking i’m better and being greeted with the patience and impulsiveness of a toddler like a slap to the face. i just want to function normally, i just want to be normal mom. why aren’t i normal mom? god why did you not make me normal? why aren’t you here with me?
i’m spending too much of my 18th year trying to figure out who i really am, rather than living like i’m 18.
it’s kinda fucked up that you’re only an age for a year. I didn’t know how to be 23 yet, let me try again
i need you to love me. i know you love me, but not in the way that i need you to love me – unconditionally.
where has the girl that loved academia gone?
it’s at tuesday at 10:26am and i’m sitting here in the fast food restaurant where i’ve just dropped you off for your shift and though i still feel lost, i finally feel like i’m beginning to find myself.
finally, i’m getting to know the girl i’ve spent the last 18 years fighting for.
finally.
i’m grateful you stormed out instead of spiting your harsh words at me.
perhaps in another universe you are happy for me instead.
perhaps in another universe i know how our arguments make me feel.
you have seen, many times, the phrase love your body! and every time, like rainwater, it glides off you. not because you cannot love it - you mostly, like, tolerate it - but because of the word "your".
is this your body? when you were 11 you had to start shaving your legs because other girls found it gross you were hairy. when you were 12, you had to stop wearing v-necks because of your chest - people were staring. your mother didn't let you dye your hair. your first boyfriend makes you dress up in skimpy clothes for him, then hated when other people coveted you. what you wear and how you present determine whether or not people find you funny or annoying or arrogant. other people get to determine if you are pretty, a court of opinion so loud it blots any good intent.
when is the body yours? magazines and instagram and tiktok endlessly advising you to "take care of" (starve) your body as if it is a weed. you must hack and slash at it, defend yourself from its wanton desires. it is a shameful, greedy thing. it is more like an art piece. you are keeping it or being kept-in-it.
you try to language it to your therapist - it's not that you don't recognize yourself in the mirror, it's more just that the thing that is in the mirror - it isn't you. that's why it's so easy to take apart: you're vaguely aware of the shape, but it feels like you are an animal hiding in the back of this cavern, snarling.
obviously you're like stuck in it. it often hurts a lot, buzzes with pain and a strange numbness. so it is your body when it's painful. that makes sense. otherwise - how many times have you been told to save yourself (your body) for marriage. for someone else. you are just borrowing it.
love your body! is so funny. somehow, without meaning to, the phrase reminds you - it isn't you. you're just inside it.
Caitlin Bailey, from Solve for Desire: Poems; “To G, after the party”
[Text ID: “I wonder / what it would have felt like to / have a choice, to choose love, / to hold anything with both hands. / It’a taken me this long / to say I want I want I want,”]
I saw my psychologist today. she used the phrase “like the sun soaking into rocks”. i thought it was beautiful.
we chatted and i told her how i never quite know how things feel in my body.
i breathe in. i breathe out. i close my eyes and try to feel again.
it hurts. — i feel as though i’ve swallowed one of those sun soaked stones. I think about it all. will you ever respect me as an individual person? see me as more than a sacrificial lamb?
the lump in my throat pulses hot. i remind myself that i am a whole, individual person. i remind myself that i have time to heal. the sun soaked stone settles hard in my chest.
i breathe in. i breathe out. i open my eyes and make myself a promise; i will seek out the sun and let myself soak in the warmth of her unconditional embrace.
i breathe in. i breathe out and exhale the sun soaked stone, because things are okay.
sun soaked stones
i am so thankful that i exist at the same time as jstor. i love reading 130 y/o journals about the representation of centaurs in ancient greek pottery while drinking my morning coffee. what a time to be alive <3
mid-year reflection; i’m 18, turning 19 in 6 months. i burnt myself out (and subsequently failed my first uni course) but i got accepted to my dream university for 2025. i kissed my girlfriend last week. i left my hometown a month ago (and i moved out 6 months before that).
i’m now more than 1500km from my hometown, but home is now my girlfriends little green van. our mornings begin with tea and our evenings frequently consist of eating pasta straight out of the pot. the betwixt is spent at waterfalls or mountains or beaches.
and how i might be broke but oh boy i’m rich.