Ever since I wrote What does it mean to be a Woman? I’ve been thinking more and more about my journey on loving oneself. With Pride month coming to a close, I thought it would be the perfect time to think about how our inner thoughts change through all the different events we experience throughout life. Now, I don’t have 50 years under my belt. But I would say I’m an a very important era of my life, my 20’s, which I think is the perfect time to find yourself and healthily test your boundaries. I’m still learning everyday, I struggle on most, but what’s important is I see and accept my journey.

Loving yourself and your experiences do not come over night. It’s truly tragic, what do you mean I’m not going to just wake up perfectly? What do you mean I’ll have to fight for my own love? AND I can’t just experience my 20’s loving myself? But some would say that the process and looking back is some of the best parts. So far, I’ll have to agree. I don’t hate high school me, I would never say that about her. She was mentally going through a lot and especially going through this while being in a really competitive high school. I don’t blame her for who she was and I’m really happy she happened. I’m so happy she remained resilient, she graduated high school, and used her two legs to get me to where I am today.

Why was I Frustrated with myself?

So you’ll see some classics in here that everyone has experienced in their life, but I’m also going to point out some things that were hard to discover. That we don’t think much about the things we do day to day but they have a lot of big impacts on us. A big thing I grew up with and still do, is comparison. I’ve always been told, “oh my god you’re just like your big sister,” “you’re exactly like her,” “you sound and look just like her”. And I didn’t think much of it, I love my big sister, it’s a compliment. But what wasn’t so great was how I internalized it. That this person knew me for .5 seconds and immediately had something to say. I felt such a lack of individuality that if I wasn’t in the exact situation as my sister, I was doing something wrong. My sister, who is six years older than me, working a steady job at a billion dollar corporation, living with her boyfriend and working out everyday, why wasn’t I in her exact same situation? I must be doing something wrong.

To go off of that, another big thought was that I felt like I was falling behind. With the current climate, I could not give less of a shit I’m really just trying to keep my head above water at this point. But there are days where I do give a shit and it sucks (shocker). And since I’m not in graduate school, or a full time job, or in a long term relationship, I’m falling behind. And it is my fault because all of my friends who are around my age are able to do these things, so I just suck at life. I’m not trying hard enough and I was always told by the adults in my life that once I graduate college I’ll be able to get a great job! Well, things don’t always go according to plan, for me at least. I’m not trying hard enough, so I’m lazy.

Not to sound like an old geezer but: internet, internet, internet. With such easy access to news and advertisements worldwide, patriarchal standards have become more accessible. It wasn’t just about seeing skinny or idealized women on billboards but now it was at our fingertips. Where I grew up, we didn’t idealize these things not like what you would see in Los Angeles, Hollywood, New York, or really any major cities. Body size and type didn’t matter in my small town in New Jersey. But since I had access to anything on Instagram, Pintrest, Twitter, and now TikTok, I knew what should be expected of me, how I had to look, and act. Pintrest actually does this by making skinny woman the aesthetic indirectly. So if you search up game day outfits or summer night outfits, you’ll usually get skinner women in outfits that will looking nothing similar on your body. So I must be ugly.

One of the craziest things I’ve learned in therapy was, “why should I talk about myself that way if I would never say that to a friend.” I legit got chills and my frontal lobe developed. I was speechless. Now every so often we may call ourselves stupid, silly, or dumb, for some small thing that’s not super serious. But what if it has become a habit and we don’t notice it? I used to say it to be funny, for example if I put my shirt on backwards I would then say “oh my gods I’m so dumb why didn’t I catch that, that was so obvious.” But then silently, it became something I said about a lot of things. Whether it was when I was cooking, talking with friends about something, or even just trying to follow directions around the city. And this is all stuff I do everyday. So if it was just a slight mistake, I would speak badly to myself not thinking much of it since it was such a small sentence in such an insignificant moment. But it became one of those things where if I said it enough it had to be true. I had to be dumb.

How I took Control

If there is one thing that has been so horrible to learn about, is that I or my parents do not control everything. How terrifying. That I would meerly have to let the world take control and I would not be able to control my safety, my feelings, and what other people think of me. So from this I had to find some work around. Maybe I try to put a reason or identify my feelings and I’ll just stop feeling that way? That by figuring out what the trigger was I could control what I was feeling. That would not work, my therapist told me so. How was I going to protect myself from the scary and hurtful world? While you can’t run from problems, it’s about coping. It’s about going through these uncomfortable moments and reacting after it happens. I can’t stop these moments before they happen and I can’t stop it while it’s happening. To experience, is to learn, and to move forward. I’m a human experiencing life for the first time, I’m not going to get it right immediately.

Identifying what is causing you to feel such negative emotion to yourself is a tough part to starting the journey, but it is a necessary step to figuring out how to recover and react. And this is definitely one of those harder than it sounds situations. Like it could be so easy to say “well obviously it’s because of internet that I feel bad about my weight.” But is there someone in your life that intensifies it? Why does it follow you off the internet and into your everyday life? Something is amplifying it and sometimes it’s not an answer we like to hear. I’m healthy, that’s what’s important.

Another instance of harder than it sounds: pausing and thinking. I think a lot of my generation has become people pleasers since we just want the people around us to be happy and not be ashamed for things they say. But is that respecting your own values? Are you really putting yourself first in those situations? Now to be honest, going into the discussion of figuring out and respecting your values comes from my therapist, so shout out to her. But putting yourself first and respecting your values really can be two different things. So when it comes to making most decisions, take the time to pause and think before you react or decide to act on something. If a friends wants you to go out on a Wednesday night, you want to make memories, be social, and experience the city. But is this something you value over a good nights rest for work tomorrow? Do you value giving your body the time to recuperate for tasks you have the next day? There’s always time to make memories with friends and be around your community but it’s important for you to make sure your work the next day is at a level that you are confident with. And don’t twist it into, “work before play!” But rather think, “how do I want to feel tomorrow? Would I rather go out and then feel miserable the next day? Or take care of myself tonight and then feel good again tomorrow?” I put myself first so I can be happy.

In Conclusion…

Individuality is scary. Going off course is scary. Not having the same story as everyone else is scary. It’s all scary because of how we are taught and raised, we are prepared and readied. So when we run into something that wasn’t in the playbook, we need to react with individuality. The education system, the job system, our parents, the government, all preach these ideas of good grades, college debt, and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps (which is literally impossible and the saying is used incredibly wrong) are all important things in life to get the American dream that we want. We’ll get a 9-5 that we love, we’ll get to travel and afford groceries with no issues. But there is a whole lot that happens in between that we aren’t even warned of. Now to be fair, there are not a whole lot of ways to prepare for these sort of experiences, but some of it is just straight up being left uninformed. Then we feel weird and that the issue is us because nobody else is having this problem right?

America builds this idea that we go to school, then we go to college, then we immediately get a job because America wants more workers but none of that is true. There is more to life than just working a 9-5, getting married, paying taxes, and having kids. So why don’t they just tell us to be open to new experiences and see what the rest of the world has to offer?

But you can really learn a lot about yourself and I liked to think the point of life is not just making friends, memories with family, and having late drunk nights, but learning and respecting yourself. Really truly diving in to figuring out who you are as a person and loving every second of it.

Thank you for reading! Have a wonderful day!