Dear self,
I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you wanted so desperately to help others when your own heart was breaking. I’m sorry I drove you to the brink of exhaustion for an expectation that is simply unobtainable. I’m sorry I didn’t care about you like I cared for others. I’m sorry on the days that it hurt to get out of bed, you hid the pain behind a plastered smile so no one worried about you. I’m sorry.
I know you’ve been hurting for a long time now. I know you still maybe lost. I know it’s hard to let go, and I know life is not always easy. But that’s because growth is a process babe. You do not just wake up and become the butterfly, and Rome was definitely not built in a day. The fact that you still struggle doesn’t make you a failure, doesn’t make you a burden. It doesn’t make you unlovable or undesirable or undeserving of care and it doesn’t make you too much or too sensitive or too needy. It makes you human. You’re going to have bad days, but the pain is a reminder that you’re healing. It often gets worse before it gets better so just because it may be stormy now doesn’t mean it will last forever.
Life is too short to skip meals. Life is too short to count your blueberries or cheerios or m&ms. Life is too short to lie awake hungry at 2am, and life is too short to dilute your personality into something as boring as numbers. Your body is not grounds for punishment. Your legs were not created to see through. Your stomach was not meant to cave in, and your skin was not meant to be a canvas.
You’ve been at war with yourself for a long time now. I know it’s hard to let go of the one thing that held you when no one else would, but you are worth more than numbers or quantities or pounds. You are worth more than self-control or independency or expectations, and you are worth more than the amount of times you have failed or not measured up. You are not a disappointment. You are not the amount of times you’ve fallen short. You are not a sum of all your achievements nor are you the definition of your failures. You are not defined by all that you are not, rather, you are defined by all that you are.
You are your passions, your desires, your aspirations. You are the bright smiles when someone looks your way, the genuine laughter with genuine friends, and the countless times your story has and will encourage, motivate, and enable others to embrace theirs. Your mistakes don’t define who you are and neither does your darkness. You are perfectly imperfect, and you are enough.
Stop holding onto the guilt of being undeserving. We are all deserving. We all hold the power to our future. It’s what we decide to do with that power in the moments that hurt the most that will ultimately determine how you write your story—the story that could inspire others—the story that will accentuate the dash at the end of your life. We are all gifted with life-changing abilities—abilities we hold the power to make a difference with. Put the blinders on babe. This is your journey. This is your life—a life you’re fighting for. You’ve been assigned this mountain to show others that it can be moved. Move your mountain and write your story. Most importantly though, be you
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