you’ll get better

i often love and appreciate and find beautiful and endearing in others the exact same traits i hate in myself. i don’t really know what to do about it still, but i like thinking that there are probably other people who look at the exact traits i hate in myself and find them beautiful and endearing, even if i can’t see myself that way.

sometimes what you’re doing might seem small and unimportant and not significant enough, not radical enough, not enough of a change; sometimes, it’s a temporary choice, a way to get by, to survive; sometimes, it’s slow, or you’re dealing with too much at once.

anything could’ve been worse, really, but you don’t deserve to be hurt. your pain is still real even if other people suffer more. other people’s pain doesn’t make your own non-existent.

we react to different things in different ways, and if you’re hurt, you don’t have to justify it to yourself by saying it was bad enough. maybe it wouldn’t have hurt someone else that much, but you are you, not someone else.

you don’t have to decide whether or not the people who’ve hurt you deserve your forgiveness right now. you don’t have to decide whether they were absolutely, unquestionably horrible or just mistaken while having the right intentions. 

you also don’t have to think about why they did it, what made them this way, whether or not it was intentional, a mistake, whether you could’ve changed it, whatever. you can if it makes it better, but you don’t have to.

when your parents make decisions, it’s their responsibility, not yours. when they decided to have a child, it was their decision and their responsibility, not yours. their actions towards you have always been their actions and their choices, not yours.

your parents’ past trauma, or your parents’ illnesses, or your parents’ unhappiness are not your fault. you’re not responsible for what happened to them and if that influences their relationship with you in ways that hurt you, it’s not your fault.

you can hate your illness with all your heart and still be afraid of getting better. because what if you’re better because you’ve been faking it, what if you’re better because it wasn’t that bad, what if feeling better leaves you lost and confused because what if all you knew about yourself was just your illness.

(you can hate yourself for this and still be afraid of getting better. feelings aren’t right or wrong, they just are)

take care of yourself as much as you can, try to be okay with yourself, try not to hate yourself, try to find things you like about yourself, but don’t be afraid that your journey to self love and acceptance being difficult means you’re unlovable.

you can love your parents, but you don’t have to. you can love them even if they’ve hurt you — feelings are not right or wrong, they just are. you don’t have to love your parents just because you have a roof over your head or food or just because they do nice things to you sometimes. no matter what people around you say, you don’t have to love your parents just because you’re still alive or because there could be physical abuse but there wasn’t or because it could’ve been worse.

you can hate your parents, but you don’t have to. it’s okay if you hate them because they’ve hurt you, and it’s okay if you don’t think you feel anything about them at all. feelings aren’t right or wrong, they just are.

you can forgive them. you can never forgive them. you can see that what they did was not intentional or was a consequence of their own trauma they never dealt with and choose to forgive them for it. you can also never forgive them, because, intentional or not, explainable or not, their actions hurt you. or maybe it was in fact intentional. it’s okay if you forgive them still, and it’s okay if you don’t.

it’ll be too slow and not enough, it’ll be one tiny step in years, it’ll take ages to get better and you absolutely will take it for granted because the fact that it got better doesn’t mean it’s good or even okay. sometimes things will get better and you’ll still feel bad.

you might be afraid that you feeling good (or even just okay or not bad) at some point means you’re not struggling (it’s not so). you might be afraid that even a second spent in anything other than complete misery means you’re not suffering enough to be deserving of support (it’s not so). you might be even afraid of actually recovering because you don’t know if there’s any you outside of your illness (there is, i promise).