But You

There’s going to be days when you screw up. I don’t like those days, most of us don’t. On those days I want to crawl into a hole and hide until it all blows over.

Believe it or not, I used to shame myself with my own weird self-punishing rituals like not allowing myself my favorite foods, or not allowing myself the tiny joys that I would allow myself to have on good days. But over the last 10 years, I’ve learned to accept myself with all the silly little flaws I come with. Now bad days are the days I treat myself especially if my mistake is really bringing me down.

In order for me to have gotten to that point, I had to realize that sometimes my mistakes feel like giants, when in reality they aren’t as big and bad as I’m making them out to be. Also the toxic environments I allowed myself to stay in, swelled my silly little mistakes to be bigger than they were. These moments can feel very big, but misunderstandings are part of language and communication. So is forgetting. So is accidentally crossing a boundary that’s new to you. Whatever it is, it’s part of learning those around us and learning ourselves. It’s all about what you’re doing to learn from it.

So since learning all this, I do my best to add to environments in positive ways. It took me a long time to unlearn self-punishing. I don’t want to add to anyone else’s overbearing inner disciplinarian. If they have one, great, they don’t need me to punish them.

We are all still worthy of love and acceptance with all our struggles and flaws.