do the hard thing and love it

It’s hard to be self aware and do the right thing when it comes to love and relationships. Love, when it feels natural, is mesmerizing. You just wanna keep falling. But that’s the trap that everyone can fall for. It’s when it feels so natural and so sweet that you put your guards down and not only until its a little too late, do you realize that the damage has been done. 

Becoming close to someone is so exciting and thrilling and comforting. To be able to text them all day and have them be so excited to hear about what’s going on in your life. And when you feel the same way, there is nothing like it. You just wanna talk to them all day and all night. You can’t wait until you see them. When someone cares about you so much and is there for you, it feels like sweet chocolate kisses. It feels like hugs and sunshine when you feel their presence in your life. 

But then reality hits and you realize that there is such a thing as too close. Boundaries come into play and it’s time to take space. “I would rather have be certain that I could keep our friendship than risk a romantic relationship when I don’t even know if I am ready for that.” Feels so bittersweet. When someone cares about you so much that they respect the friendship and don’t want to lose it. But then settles in, the pain of knowing that you wan’t nothing else but to be with them, but you can’t. It’s hard exchanging respect for love. When you want to be with him but you know it’s a dangerous game to play. Better to play it safe and protect yourself and respect his wishes. 

But the cup half full. At least he’s still in your life. The friendship is the foundation of everything and all the rest is just extra bonuses. But how hard it is to take a step back when you have opened pandora’s box. Even if you hadn’t opened it all the way, just the little peak into it can’t be reversed by closing it shut upon the strike of fear. It’s hard to go backwards. It’s hard to slow down when you’re racing towards each other at the speed of light. How does one slow down two natural beams of light that are facing each other?

Sometimes you fuck up. Big time. You lose yourself in the name of doing what you want. Until it becomes what you don’t want. It’s so hard to recognize when you have hurt someone, especially when you didn’t mean to. But sometimes you have to fuck up big time to learn your lesson. People’s feelings matter and it’s not worth hurting them.

I hurt someone I really care about. I didn’t realize it at the time how messed up it was. Now it’s months later and I’m having dreams about it. My subconscious even knows that I messed up. The guilt eats me up inside and I know I have to make amends.

At the end of the day, I hurt someone I care deeply about. Even if the care is not reciprocated the same way, I owe it to myself to try to apologize.

I feel like such a shitty person. I felt like everyone hated me. I felt the loss of a lot of friendships so suddenly. It’s like someone died. I guess it’s warming me up for the end of college too.

Admitting you were wrong and you made a huge mistake is really difficult. Especially when you hurt someone else in a deeply hurtful way. Now I know the harm I have caused. And it’s hitting me hard.

I recognize how I was disrespecting other people and hurting myself in the process. At a certain point it’s not fun anymore.

Sometimes you gotta say, “What the fuck am I doing?”. Those epiphany moments where you’re realizing things send it back into reality. You get smacked in the face and life hits you fast. You gotta realize what you have done. Do the hard thing and love it.

It’s kind of crazy to look back at how I let people treat me in the past. Now that I have learned how to set healthy and necessary boundaries, it shocks me that I was so passive for so long. I am a strong person and I don’t take bullshit. But I have learned that I have issues with standing up for myself to people who are close to me. I am susceptible to manipulation and deceit in search of friendship and love.

I have learned so much about self love, healthy relationships, and putting myself first. It seems so simple but it has changed my entire life. It was like one day, I woke up from my own personal prison. Quite honestly, I was a people pleaser and looked to others for validation. I relied on social harmony for a sense of peace.

I used to hold such an attachment to people who were important in my life, that I let them walk all over me. Through healthy and empowering friendships, I have been taught what true friendships feels like. Even in my romantic life, I never truly understood how I was letting others underestimate my value. Now that I know what I deserve, it is appalling that I let myself be treated so poorly for so long.

Today, I look towards my own happiness for peace. I have learned to tell people when I have reached my limits, without feeling like I am being a bad friend or being rude. I have learned to listen to myself instead of the voice in my head who was afraid of what other people thought. I have truly begun to understand the importance of liking myself more than other people liking me. It is something I work on everyday because being a bystander to your own life is too easy. Do the hard thing and love it.

It’s a crazy moment when you realize your own patterns. It’s easy to be blind to the unhealthy behavior we all engage in. But once you become aware of it, it’s much easier to understand why our lives are not the way we want them to be. Cognitive dissonance is when your values and your actions do not align. This means you either have to change one of those things. Sometimes its easier to just change your values. It’s easy to lose your values in the face of change and external influence. It’s a difficult thing to stop and realize one day that you have become someone you don’t like. Being able to recognize your old patterns and realizing when you fall back into them is critical to ending the cycle. It’s hard to trace the exact moment when you fell down the rabbit hole but that’s the thing, it took more than just a moment to become someone you can’t recognize.

The shame that comes along with the feelings of regret are the hardest to deal with. But, these are the strongest push factors away from the person you used to be. It’s scary realizing some of your problems were created by none other than yourself. But once you become aware of your faults, you can’t unknow them. You just tend to choose to ignore them. It’s the awful feeling you have when you are reminded of something you wish you never did, that motivates you to change. As much as those feelings hurt and typically keep you up at night, the painful lessons they bring are essential to your growth.

Mistakes are necessary unless you keep making them too many times. Then they just become toxic behavior. It’s crazy how life will let you get by until the point at which you can no longer try to get away with it anymore. You hit a breaking point. You’re faced with the cold, hard truth and it’s urgent. Hello, this is reality calling and I cannot leave a message, we gotta talk ASAP. The good thing about making mistakes and being given a second (or third or fourth or fifth!) chance, is that you have a choice. You have a choice to keep doing what you’re comfortable with and keep being embarrassed and in denial. Or you can be uncomfortable and choose to change so you can be proud of who you are. Do the hard thing and love it.

I’ve always felt that the times when I was the healthiest and most grounded in my life were when I was most dedicated to my health and fitness, predominantly with running. I started running when I was 12 or 13 after I wanted to get skinny since I had just started middle school. Looking back on it, it was such a superficial and toxic reason to start but I’m somewhat grateful that it introduced me to the amazing world of running. 

As I played various sports, running was pretty consistent throughout the ups and downs of quitting soccer and starting field hockey. Even when I wasn’t in season, I turned to running to relieve stress and move my body. Now that I am two years retired from high school sports, it’s been a crazy journey of tryint to maintain fitness and athleticism. But I am excited to start this journey towards becoming an avid runner again. 

My goal is to run a 10k in August 2019 and a half marathon in February 2020. I have always focused on speed and the few times I have tried to run long distance I always ended up injuring myself. This time, I want to work towards a goal that allows me to prevent injury by taking my time and getting in shape in a way that excites me. 

I hope to pick up an addiction to runner’s high and integrate it into my lifestyle. It’s a fabulous way to relieve stress and you can argue that it is one of the most human of experiences. When I run, I feel so alive and it helps me remember that I can do the hard thing and love it. 

I have decided to quit drinking alcohol for as long as possible because I have realized the toll it has taken on my life. Physically, I have chronic hives, gained weight, my digestion is out of wack and just generally feel worse. Mentally, I have noticed a negative correlation with drinking alcohol and my mental health. Socially, I have regretted things I have done while too drunk. The few and far benefits of feeling included and always having social plans don’t really outweigh the pervasive cost it has had on my life.

I saw somewhere that defined alcoholics as whether the removal of alcohol benefits that person’s life. I truly have seen that removing alcohol from my life improves my life in the times that I have done so. However, the longest I have gone sober in the last two years since I started college is probably two months. That’s a scary thought. It’s time to give my body a break and move forward with the new life I want to create. 

I’ve tried many times in the past to quit this extremely socially acceptable thing. It’s just always been easier to keep drinking. And at times, I didn’t want to stop drinking. It’s an escape from the troubles of life but it ends up leaving you high and dry. It robs you of being present in the moment and of your memories of the past. It’s taken a lot from me but I want to reclaim my power. I have finally found the courage to do the hard thing and love it.