Awake

Well everyone, summer is over and Monday morning (at 5:30am) I will be waking up to go back to school.

This has been such an incredible summer, but I miss routine. I have allowed myself to fall out of all routines that I followed throughout the school year. In some aspects this has been good, but my body and apartment are ready to get back to regular meals and cleanings.

I had three months to lose weight, read novels, find and love myself, and get tan by the pool. You want to know which of those things I accomplished? Not a single one.

I slept in till 10 or 11 most days, watched A LOT of Netflix, and ate out so many times my bank should be sending me to the doctor. But I didn’t stress, I didn’t have to work, and I got to truly take a much needed (bit too long) break.

After this summer of unwinding, I can officially say that I am ready for school and excited to start another great year!

Hot Cup of Coffee

Good morning readers,

After a week from absolute HELL, I was able to lay in my bed and relax until 10 this morning and oh my god it felt so good. I woke up, made breakfast, and now I’m going to clean my apartment. I love weekends like this where my biggest responsibilities are to my self.

Life is so crazy busy and we need to take time for ourselves before we get lost in the hustle. If you have weekends off, take the whole weekend for you every once in a while. They only come every five days. If you’re like me, those five days can feel like a marathon.

I’m not sure if I’ve said this before, but I teach. Kindergarten. So, my days are long and exhausting, then I usually go out and see friends on the weekend. Granted, this is just as important for my mental health. However, I occasionally need the whole weekend, or at least 2/3 of it to recover. That means just me, my couch, and a book or Netflix.

This past summer I worked full time as a server in a local restaurant. I had one, maybe two days off a week. And every single time, I would plan things for my day off. After about a month of doing this, I felt absolutely crazy. I needed a break and I refused to let myself have it because I felt like there was so many more important things I had to do. That’s where this bottom line comes in: you are the most important thing in your life.

You have to be selfish with your time, especially when you have so little. You have to put your needs above anyone else because, at the end of the day, they’re going to do the same. If you don’t take care of yourself, a little at a time, you’re going to have to do so much work for your health in the end.

I’m slowly learning to be selfish with my time and listen to my needs. If I don’t, who will?

Saturday night

Welp, it happened again. I fell for another egotistical, immature boy disguised as a man who “wanted to get to know me”.

This type of boy was so common in college that I forgot to look for any other type. However, I’m almost a year out of college and they keep showing up in my post-grad life. This Saturday night, I was stood up by a boy I had thought about for weeks. And looking back, all those thoughts were fantasy.

He held no substance. We didn’t share interests. He was just a copy and paste version of every other man on twitter. Nothing made him stand out other than the fact that, for two seconds, he pretended to be interested in getting to know me. That’s when that stupid cliche quote comes into play: “We accept the love we think we deserve”.

I hate to always bring everything back to self-love, but c’mon. Why else would I let a man who makes memes in his spare time and refuses to use punctuation ruin my Saturday night? Deep down, I know I deserve better but I was so quick to settle for the first man to show interest in me. If one of my friends told me about him, I’d tell her she was crazy and needed to immediately block him.

But that’s the whole point. We allow so many more things when it comes to ourselves than we would with a friend. I would never let my friends be talked to or treated the way that I, so often, allow myself to be treated. I talk to myself harsher than I would ever speak to my friends. I criticize myself more than I’d ever criticize my friends. And that’s what it all boils down to, I have to become my own friend so that I can treat myself like a friend. I should be the absolute love of my own life. I should be kind and gentle with myself, allow error and encourage growth. It’s all part of the journey and it’s all dependent on the other parts. In order to achieve self-love, I have to nurture the body I’m in and the soul I hold. I have to live a healthy life and find passions in life. Only after I have achieved self-love will I be able to experience outward love. How can I spread something that I lack?

This journey isn’t a quick, Tinder fix. It’s going to take some time and I won’t be able to comfortably and successfully be with anyone until I can comfortably and successfully be with myself.

What does healthy look like?

Let me begin this post with a little back story.

I have ALWAYS hated my body. I have absolutely no memory of ever loving or even liking my body. I remember being chunky in elementary school and wishing I looked like other girls. I remember comparing myself to my two best friends in middle school and joking about how “fat” we were. I remember crying in my room alone in high school because I wasn’t skinny like the popular girls. Here’s the kicker though, I was never actually overweight.

Now I am freshly out of college, working my first real job and guess what. I STILL hate my body. Only, now I actually am overweight.

The problem isn’t my weight though. It’s my mindset. It’s always been my mindset. Surrounded by magazine covers, and TV specials, and Instagram posts of impossible standards like Kylie Jenner and Gigi Hadid, I have always felt like I cannot possibly amount to beautiful. How can I, with my squishy tummy and stretch marks, be beautiful like these women? And that is where the problem lies. Beauty is not one size. It is not one color, it is not one gender, it is not one person over another. Beauty truly does not discriminate. It’s we who do that.

It takes a lot to retrain a brain that has been hellbent on hating its body for a whole lifetime, but I sure can try. It is realizing that MY healthy might not be a size 2 with lip injections and a fat ass. It is realizing that MY healthy will not look like my best friend’s. It is no longer comparing myself to and hating every beautiful woman that I pass. It is celebrating differences in body type, despite what society has trained me to do my entire life.

So, today I strive to be healthy. I will work harder to love the body I have, while putting good things into it. I will work hard to reach my goals and I will do what makes me happy. If that results in weight loss, great. If it results in me finally being happy, even better.