dip. eat. repeat.

I will talk more, be wrong more, and feel less ashamed about it. I will endeavor to see beyond myself, chase moments of mental freefall, and unabashedly document the full spectrum of this here human’s experience. I will write this story precisely as I see it, even if that means losing you in the process.

One thing that therapy has made me realize is that very few things happen for no reason. If you suddenly fall in love, if you develop a weird compulsion, if you’re incredibly anxious for no reason… there is a reason. You have to look for the reason. If there are all these things going weirdly wrong in your life and you aren’t looking for a reason (what a strange coincidence…), you’re probably in denial.

if you love it, take the risk

Say the thing

Sometimes I’ve said the thing (you know: The Thing) and breakups have ensued. But the truth is, looking back, I’m so happy those breakups happened. I know for certain that they would’ve happened anyway.

A lot of what I’ve realized is that you can’t fake it. Like, you can’t pretend to be unattached when you are. You can’t pretend to be over it when you’re not. It always shows through. All faking it does is stop you from connecting to someone in a real way.

If you can consistently get in the habit of saying what you want to say, you’ll realize it’s a strength and not a vulnerability. Everyone loves someone who is self-aware enough to disclose the ugly things about themselves. (In fact, charismatic people often weaponize their vulnerability. But that’s a story for another day.)

The love lives in you. You were born perfect, a complex and beautiful and sensitive creature. You were born to skin your knees, go surfing, call a friend to tell them a hysterical story on a Friday night. Born to go after what you want, born to try, fail, bask in the sun. If you want to be more confident, you have to stop examining your flaws with a microscope, watching other people’s reactions anxiously, flinching with fear all the time like a nervous dog. The world is waiting for you.

I started feeling lovable when I stopped caring so much about being loved. When I accepted that I would always be kind of a weirdo, jagged around the edges, occasionally prone to saying the wrong thing, insecure at inconvenient times. When I let go of my preoccupation with myself I was able to focus on other people, to start to see them. Paying attention to people is what really makes someone lovable. But not paying attention through the lens of obsessively analyzing how they’re responding to you—paying attention to who they actually are. Forget yourself for a moment and see how that feels. Stop calibrating other people’s responses and measuring the hours between messages. Tell yourself: it’s okay if I’m too much, too little, not right, misunderstood. Maybe it doesn’t matter as much as I think it does. Accept the hunger within you, the ever-present black hole. When you do that, you’ll start to see other people more clearly. The world will feel more neutral, less hostile.

I am in a delusional neurochemical fog, and one day it will lift. I think that it will never lift, but nevertheless one day it will lift.

it’s okay to want approval
it’s okay to want attention
it’s okay to be needy
it’s okay to have needs