The
truth is, maybe I truly love myself. Sometimes my dreams pour into
reality; and what I feel in the dream spills into my waking thoughts. So, today
I felt, maybe I love myself. I do everything I can to make myself a better
person. I keep myself company, I argue with my own thoughts, I try to make
myself feel better. I just want the best for myself. Maybe sometimes I’m the
tough coach that gets you to do 100 push-ups just so you can get stronger
biceps, and maybe some days I’m the calm therapist that listens without
judgement. Ok, a lot of the days I receive the coach treatment from myself.
I think
I’m on the path to accepting that the only person I need to prove myself to, is
my own self. My self-worth comes from within, my validation, from my own thoughts.
It’s no doubt that I’ve come a long way from the pessimistic, victim-mentality
teen I was. My journey hasn’t been your typical one, and the one advice I could
give myself back then would be to read self-help books.
When I
was 17-18, I had my religious resurgence, and I thought it was wrong to read
fiction. My reasoning was that rather then doing something like reading
fiction, you should be doing something that will add better to religion. So,
reading fiction was like a guilty pleasure. I read a lot when I was 19, but I
still felt this way.
Whenever
I would read fiction, I felt dissociated from real life; for a few minutes I
wouldn’t be fully present in the real world. A lot of the times when I would
take a break to pray, my prayers wouldn’t be all that great. That’s one of the
major reasons why reading fiction gave me this restricted feeling.
On the
internet, social media and stuff, I met some muslim girls that were into
reading books. Somehow I thought you weren’t supposed to. Maybe like you could
do it in private, but never announce it out and tell the world. Slowly, I
decided it wasn’t all that bad. And I when I figured this out, I started
reading less and less. You know how when you think of something as forbidden,
it appeals more to you? I’m looking at you, Adam and Eve.
It’s
only recently, however, that I got into non-fiction. I read books like ‘I am
Malala’ and snippets of autobiographies. I really like biographies. I want to
be a better person. I want to hack into my mind and control my emotions. It
helps that recently I started learning that emotions and feelings are just
chemicals squirted by the brain into the bloodstream. The ‘amygdala’ is an
almond shaped mass of grey matter inside each cerebral hemisphere that makes us
experience emotion.
Miraculous,
isn’t it? However, there is a rational part of our brains that we must use to
counter the effects of the amygdala. You can’t even trust emotions, by the way.
They are usually there to protect you from dangerous situations, and these are
supposed to be attacks from predators or stuff like that. Instinctual
reactions, that’s all they are. As higher-level beings, we have to recognize
the trap of these emotions and counter them.
You
choose how you feel in the face of these emotions. They can be controlled.
There’s this book that I read when I was 16; ‘The Seven Habits of Highly
Effective Teens’, I didn’t read the full of it, but I LOVED it. I wanted to buy
it but somehow that didn’t happen. I should have realized then that I really
liked self-help books. Anyway I got a copy of that book and I’m currently
reading it.
In one
of the parts it says, ‘No one can affect you unless you let them.’ I’m doing my
best to work with that. Somehow I feel like I’m betraying my body by going
against my emotions. I have no idea why.
I just
took a break from this and my brain just told me it’s not true. I’m not
betraying my body. It was weird. I just got a single pure thought, ‘I don’t
think it’s like that.’ My brain literally just talked to me. Wow.
In the
end, I think, I really love myself. I want to be the best. I want to be better
than other people. But as they say, Comparison is the thief of joy. From today,
every time I think some other girl is cooler than me, I’m going to tell myself
it’s because I love my self so much that I want to be better than that person.
But I probably am. I have so much love for myself that I fail to see how cool I
am, because I want to push myself to be better, better.
I’m not
an empty canvas; I’m splattered with unruly colors on one side, a beautiful
master-piece on the other. A few misplaced but symmetrically aesthetic pieces
scattered all over. Besides, ‘coolness’ is subjective. We’ve all been
conditioned to accept one type of coolness, but you know what? I’m
unsubscribing from this. It’s not fair. I don’t want to be cool in that way
anyway. I have my own quirks and nice bits of my personality, and that’s all
that matters.
All
that matters is my authenticity. I’m so grateful that in my life I have
productive, helpful things that I do. For example, I have my blog, my graphic
design, and these give me a sense of purpose, achievement, and fulfilment. A
lot of the time I feel like my fiction reading amounts to nothing—but that’s
not true at all. It gives me new vocab, ideas, new experiences and I can draw a
leson or two from it.
Sometimes
when people disregard us and our opinions, or the things we do, we actually
believe them. You shouldn’t. They know nothing! For example, if someone on the
street shouted, ‘You have an ugly brain!’ Does that mean it’s true? Hell, no!
They don’t even know what your brain looks like, or all the amazing things it
does for you. You don’t get to believe whatever people say about you. At all.
They may seem to have an ‘outsider’s perspective’ or whatever, but you do not,
and I repeat DO NOT get to believe them! That’s their own loser opinion.
This
has happened to me so many times. People say uninformed things about me, and I
just cast my gaze down and accept it. And even if it’s not true, it becomes
true because I believe it. No one can judge you. An old cliché, right? But it’s
true. No one has any right to tell you what is not true about yourself.
Just
like people are wrong about you, you have to accept that your perspective of
others is wrong sometimes. I mean, you never know when you’re thinking the
wrong thing. Some things can be excused but never let anyone take advantage of
you or mistreat you.
What
are you supposed to do to earn your worth? What makes you worthy? What makes
you deserve the best? Nothing, that’s what. Your existence is reason enough. I know
this might not snap you into believing you are worth it, but you need to know
this. No one person deserves something over you. You are worth it. You are
worth all the good things and deserve the best. Because you are human and you
exist. Nothing else.
Wow. This post started out as something else
and ended up being some kind of advice forum. This isn’t even written in my
usual memoirs of asi voice, but it’s coming from deep within. I think when you
start looking to be a better person, things come to you. It’s probably like
that for any new thing you start on. For example, say you started becoming
interested in archaeology, and you see that kind of stuff popping up all around
you. Maybe you just start noticing things more.
That’s
all from me for now. See you, and don’t forget to be awesome!
Asi.
0 comments