Love Yourself Tuesday.

I got it from my mama.
I have decided every Tuesday around here will be a day to love yourself. Who likes Tuesdays? I don’t, you don’t. Because let's be real, Tuesday is a drag. No one likes it, it’s kind of a jerk, and everyone’s just face palming all day because it isn’t hump day, it isn’t Friday eve, it isn’t even Friday at all, and y’all were already prepared for Monday being gross because it’s Monday. So why not give yourself a little reminder that you’re awesome too? Right there in that awkward pre-middle of the week period when you’re just blah? Love Yourself Tuesdays or LYTs are gonna be a thing here. I need to remember to be kind to myself, and you need to remember to be kind to yourself. It can be anything; a freckle, characteristic, scar, a photo, an outfit, something you did, something you didn’t, just pick one thing you dig about yourself in that very moment. Talk yourself up, love yourself down. Share it with me here in the comments and I'll write back. Tell a stranger, yell at the sky, sing it in the car. Love. Your. Self. Here's mine.

My awkward stage was bad. I mean it was awful, like my eyebrows had their own personalities awful. It stuck around for a long long time and I didn't really start feeling comfortable in my own skin until after high school. Teenagers can be little shits, girls specifically, so that didn't help either. I was deeply self-conscious and I struggled because of it. Today I can wake up, look in the mirror, and see beauty in my imperfections. I can see my tiny bird lips (bottom larger than the top), an a-symmetrical hairline I used to hide behind a massive side-swept fringe that was almost as dramatic as my teenage angst. I see contentment, wisdom, worry lines and sass. I can also see my mother. One of the coolest things is seeing photos of her back in the day and realizing our resemblance, especially at this time in my life. We definitely were twinning in our early twenties without even meeting each other. We often wore our hair up the same way, posed alike without meaning to, and we both have that deep-in-thought, off into the distance gaze every now and again. I get real excited when people tell me I look like her. I'm honored I do, she's stunning. And guess what? We rock the same hairline. And that is what I love about myself today. 

Breathe. Breathe again. And again.

I'm gonna be raw and open for a bit. It will take a great deal of strength to write this because these words will be painful. But I'm well on my way as far as accepting myself and sashaying on with my life. I am up there as far as one of the strongest people I've known. No one will ever understand the absolute hell cage anxiety disorders pin you down in. Unless you've been surrendered. 

Anxiety takes your face between it's hands and stares you down, locking your head in place, keeping you from moving.  Keeping you from living. Really living. It's sudden and abrasive, loud, unforgiving, annoying and just awfully cruel. Every single emotion is replaced by dread, by tons of questions, and for me there was a time I couldn't even recognize what I felt because all it was all panic. Worry was home for me, and much as I wanted out, it had a goddamn welcome mat. 

These words are strange to me though. Back there, everything's foggy and out of place in an weird time/space continuum. Like a messed up frame in a negative sequence that you don't even remember taking, but it's there. And you're here. And you can't help but try and make sense of how you got here. It's terrifying to even look back at certain days because it's as though a giant chunk in the calendar of your life has been beaten and burned. Everything's suffocating and you're just scared someone is going to ask you what you're doing because your response will be like "Well I'm living, am I doing it right? What's wrong? Why did you ask me that? What the hell is wrong?" Nothing's wrong. It's the black and white thinking pattern many people with anxiety struggle with. So, everything is wrong if it isn't 100% right. 

And then you get to where you can't remember at all. I'm at that point right now and that's huge. The trick is to not let it become you no matter how much it tries because it's a shitty home, it's not safety, and it's not living. Anxiety is not me, but only a part of me I can manage now and I'm really proud of that. It will always be my absolute biggest accomplishment in my life. A lot of amazing things are going to happen soon and that's one of the reasons I created this blog. To be able to fully experience life over and over again. I deserve more than my mind only allows me to feel and the best time to feel better and to just be okay is always. Never forget that. 

I’m at a point where I’m trying not to say I’ve eradicated anxiety from my life forever because that’s not realistic. I’ve made the mistake in the past where I thought it was just gone and would never return. Guess what? It came back and punched me in the chest even harder. If anything, I have overcome my perception of anxiety. I can deal with it if it's here, when it comes because it always will, and if it’s not around, that’s great too.