frustrated bc i want to be Perfect Me™ and get better grades and clear up my skin and lose more weight but im stuck w Actual Garbage Me™
speaking as a certified Raccoon Person™ aka an Actual Garbage Adult™, know ye this: the best way to be your Better Self, whatever that means to you, is to first embrace and love your Garbage Self.
sounds paradoxical? allow me an explain:
see, the thing is, we get sold this bullshit cultural narrative whereby only the pretty and virtuous are entitled to Good Things as their reward for being pretty and virtuous, and the biggest Good Thing of all is the ability to love yourself, because how could you dare do that if you’re not pretty and virtuous enough to deserve it? but the thing is, if you don’t love yourself, it doesn’t matter how pretty and virtuous you are, because you’ll lack the ability to recognise it, which makes you entirely dependent on external validation for your self-worth and let me tell you, that is a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation to be in.
and what this means, when you buy into it, is that instead of thinking that you deserve Good Things now and actively working towards them, you get intimidated into thinking, oh, no, I can’t get that reward yet, because I’m not pretty and virtuous enough to deserve it - lemme fantasise about a Good Thing happening to me in six months, when I’ve lost weight and picked up my grades and my skin is clear, because then I’ll look pretty and virtuous in the movie-version of my life that plays in my head at all times, but which is functionally disconnected from anything that helps me achieve the goals it romanticises, because it always takes place in a future where the stuff that inhibits me from striving for Good Things, like a lack of self-love, has magically ceased to be a factor.
so what do you do to prevent this bullshit? your embrace your garbage. I’m not saying it’s finger-snap easy, because it’s not - ooh boy, do I know how un-easy it can be! - but you can’t transform yourself into someone you think is worthy of love if you don’t love your starting-point, too, even if you also wanna move on from it.
thus: instead of saying because I hate myself, I need to change, you’ve got to say because I love myself, I deserve to grow. your Garbage Self is people, too, and they can’t change instantly - not now, and not in that mythical future we always dream about. the best mantra I ever had as a teenager was from a goddamn makeup commerical - I think it was fucking revlon or some bullshit - but the line was this: it won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. and that is the only time in my entire life that advertising has ever been of any practical use to me, because fifteen years later, I can’t remember what that ad was selling, but I remember the tagline, and it helped me get into positive routines that lasted for years.
and I know I’m kind of rambling now, but like I said, I’m a Raccoon Person™ and sometimes it’s really hard to love my garbage enough to get my actual shit together, but I’m trying. my skin isn’t clear, my weight is up and my grades (metaphoric at this point, but let’s substitute deadlines for accuracy) are shot to hell, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be that way forever. it won’t happen overnight, but it will fucking happen if I let myself believe that I deserve it, that I can work for it -
so that’s what I’m gonna do.
(via flowers-grow-in-your-heart)
wiccan-pride reblogged this from deathtml
funnysmartandpretty liked this fangirlycupcake liked this
hotmamacentral liked this
loved-and-left-haunted13 liked this elis1412 liked this
sadpiscesbabee liked this tara4b reblogged this from deathbyshoe-icide
anxietybread reblogged this from ladyartcmis
one-day-i-shall-sleep reblogged this from supernaturalchickennugget
generousbreadtale liked this
hannityy liked this
burntorbit liked this ninnija liked this
faerie-fern liked this
the-latchkey-kid reblogged this from teenagerposts bling---ping liked this
babybeatnik reblogged this from cocaine-sweetie potatoe-life liked this
emmygoes2 reblogged this from ellariasand
lgbtieflings liked this
ellariasand reblogged this from babybeatnik
touchedesroses liked this
drinkerofcoffeewriterofwords reblogged this from babybeatnik
drinkerofcoffeewriterofwords liked this deathtml posted this
- Show more notes