Breaking the cycle.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything.

I have recently felt very trapped in a mundane cycle. I am living in a place that does not feel like home— close enough to see the people I love but far enough to feel very alone. My job is exhausting, my second job is exhausting, and life is just draining me.

I do very little for joy. I see my friends, I work, and I “relax”- which involves laying on my couch, napping, and overeating. But I have abandoned all passions.

I have been in this slump since before the pandemic but the pandemic has really brought this issue to the surface for me. I’ve noticed it more than ever before. I have no plan or pathway for the future. I don’t even see a vision of myself in five years.

I attribute this lack of motivation and drive to my depression, which has worsened so badly in the past year and a half. I was in a relationship where I was so unhappy and turning into a version of myself I didn’t recognize because the fear of being alone during a pandemic was so excruciating that my dead-end relationship seemed like the better option. My friends stopped checking in as much. My depression was so bad I could barely move some days. On top of all of that, I was trying to teach first grade in a pandemic— and feeling inadequate every step of the way.

I finally feel like I’m climbing out of my slump. I’m starting to look at and envision plans for my immediate future— where to next, what to do next, who to involve. I feel a little better about myself and what I have to pour into the world, whereas for a while I felt I had nothing to offer.

Here’s to a fresh new year (starting in May oops) and finding the best version of myself one step at a time.

Reality.

Wow it’s been forever since I’ve written but I’m feeling inspired to share.

I have spent the past 6 months tied up in a back and forth with a guy who continuously put me on the back burner and used empty promises to keep me around.

He would bail on plans and ignore texts, only to resurface when he wanted a hookup that would end in empty “I’ll work on it”s.

I did a lot of bluffing. Saying I was done and was blocking him, only to allow him to slide back into my inbox weeks later with a “let me make it up to you”.

After six months I have come to two realizations: I only allowed this because I feared I was incapable of finding something else and also I am absolutely dispensable to him. And I am not the type of person that should allow herself to be dispensable to anyone.

He never took the time to get to know me, so how could he possibly know what an absolute gem he could’ve had? Instead of blaming myself( like normal), I’m blaming him and pitying him for letting this one slip through his fingers.

Finding someone who actually values and appreciates me will be worth the wait. In the meantime, I’ll be working on that self-love thing I’m always talking about.

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.