it's the little things

It never has been.

The older you get the more you realise:

I live on my own. I am 25 years old. I have a job and I pay my own bills. Yet, I am being called cute every day. It is not only situations in which I get complimented for my outfit or something I said. It happens in all sorts of situations - also work related ones. I must say that for the longest time, until I reached my 24th birthday, I was not all that bothered about it. “Just be happy, they probably just like you or think you are attractive. At least you are not disliked by anybody and you get mens approval and they feel like protecting you”. There is a lot wrong with looking at the situation this way. For one, you are not being taken seriously. I can not count how many times I was sexually assaulted and when I yelled or got angry the perpetuator and his friends just laughed at me. Also, it implies that just because I am a young looking woman, I need more protection. This might be true but if I was a man it would just be absurd to think “I am at higher risk for assault and abuse however at the same time I get more protection”. What the heck?

“Take care, she’ll bite your ankle!” are things I have heard when getting angry about being mistreated and speaking up about it. I am a pushover. I am a 25 year old woman who looks quite young, is rather short and on the slimmer side. This results in me not being taken seriously in so many scenarios. 

I bet I am not the only woman who experiences this, cute, short, slim or thick.

I think that we all struggle with this some of the time...or let’s be real - a lot of the time. But I also see how my friends are being treated. And I do have the feeling that because of my looks it happens a tiny bit more often to me. And it sucks. I am an adult. Just treat me like one.

The older I get, the more my values shift. What I once considered as beautiful and unattainably attractive has now become boring to me. Social constructs and norms annoy me, other times I find great comfort in them. They are there for a reason after all. They give us safety and something to hold on to when nothing else seems certain.

I started valuing the traditions of my family more. What once used to be an annoying, old fashioned chore, has now become a real pleasure to my senses and I try to live it through and through.

I once didn’t want to be in nature, I wanted to go to fancy places. Now I feel most at home and at peace in the forest, by the lake, by the sea or the mountains.

I wanted to have all the brand names, all the fancy things. Now I want freedom, experiences, nutritious and yummie food and a healthy glowing body with a peace of mind.

I once wanted to be a big name with lots of money and people looking up to me. Now I want good friends, loyal love and grounded surroundings including a potential partner with similar values to mine.

Every time you look at me my body shivers.

It’s like I can’t control my body anymore.

Every time you talk to me I have to try extra hard to listen to what you are saying.

Every time you touch me I get such deep euphoria in my whole body, it’s hard not to let it show on my face.

Just let it come as it is

Don’t stress

It will be yours

If you wait

You make me kinder

To you

To myself

To others

Interesting how your mind can be so full

But when he looks at you

Not because I was unhappy, quite the opposite to be honest. I started to think about the people in my life, how far I’ve taken myself and how I loved my job. How I saw a purpose in it.

And I started to feel so grateful. My way to work is quite beautiful I have to add. I go on the train for half an hour, through the city centre where I can look at beautiful buildings and the city waking up to another metropolitan day.

Then when I get off the train I’m in a tremendously beautiful district with old buildings and cute little cafes, boutiques and restaurants. I’m a sucker for that anyhow.

And I started to think about how for the last few years this was exactly what I was visualising. How I wanted it to look. How I wanted it to feel. How I wanted to work and what kind of company it should be. What the vision of the company should be. And it just hit me.

I know that life is crazy and has lots of turns and I’m scared. Scared but also grateful.

This post doesn’t make sense but still I wanted to share my imperfect thoughts.

Being with someone new after a breakup is really weird. Even if you are over your ex, you are so used to their smell, their touch and how they feel. When you start dating a new person, at first everything seems wrong. They don’t respond in ways the other person would have. They don’t have the same eyes, they smile differently and they talk differently. They have different tastes, believes and a different background. I found this very hard to accept at first. I recently met someone who did everything right from the beginning. If my life were a movie, this would be exactly how the nice guy should behave. But still I was sitting back and asking myself why my ex kept popping back into my mind. My date and me could be laughing about some stupid joke and just at the happiest moment – boom – there was my ex’s face right in front of me, almost real. And that’s when it hit me. I still hadn’t let go completely. The tiniest part of me still thought that somehow – we might be end game. Which is ridiculous regarding our very different aspirations, goals and views about the world. This is no perfect Disney movie where two opposite people make it work despite it all. It’s fucking cold, hard reality.

I still find myself wanting to text them, to tell them what made me mad about the last words they said to me but then I realize it doesn’t matter. It won’t erase our differences or the things said and done. I still find myself wanting to be friends with them but then I see it’s pointless. Even friends need to be somewhat similar. Even friends need to love themselves equally – right?

But it’s good. I’m not sad. The breakup gave me the opportunity to find someone on my wavelength. Someone who doesn’t want to change me and I don’t want to change them either. And even though it might not be the person I’m currently seeing, it’s a step in the right direction. I’m realizing this: that we were just not right for each other. It takes a lot of pressure and blame off of me and the other person. I would like to say I will always love my ex but that’s not true. I got hurt too badly to still love them. I’m even asking myself if I ever did love them or if I was just infatuated with hormones and lust. I’m actually still really angry at them as well. Maybe that’s because they said some extremely insensitive things in the end. But that isn’t the point. The point isn’t blaming someone or finding the ‘bad person’ in the relationship. The point is that I am moving on and it feels amazing. I am enjoying getting to know a new person and simultaneously – getting to know myself better. Even though I am not sure I am ready for anything serious, I’m still enjoying being chased. Haven’t felt like that in a little so that’s definitely an ego boost.

So you won’t have to put up with bad behaviour or not being cherished. So you have the strength to walk away from people who don’t really love you. You need to love yourself so much that nobody ever - including yourself - is allowed to give you less than you deserve.

Why is it necessary to always be going somewhere? “What are you going to do after your degree?”

“You took a semester off? But what are you doing with all that time? Don’t you feel lazy?”

Why is there so much shame in standing still? In not knowing all the answers and being okay with that?

We live in such a fast paced world, we have forgotten how to live without thinking 10 steps ahead. Anxiety disorders, depression, OCD and many other mental illnesses are becoming more and more frequent. I don’t think that this is a coincidence.

I would like to believe there is depth to the human soul. But what if the ‘depth’ we all praise homo sapiens with is just a bunch of nonsense? What if our longing for depth is just a coping mechanism from feeling inadequate? We tell ourselves that we and our thoughts are important and unique. But if we look at the world, we are not important. Our sense of entitlement does not want to hear this but in the grand scheme of things our existence is – regarding how long the earth has been here – just a small spark in the hugest bonfire existing. We make ourselves believe that our inner world will never die even though the body will at some point. If it is tales about going to heaven or being born into a new body, whether that might be a plant, an animal or another human. The sheer thought of death – of just disappearing into dust – scares the heck out of us. But why? We give birth to children even if we don’t want to be parents, we write books and try to become famous, but for what? Because we do not want to be forgotten. These immortality projects take up most space in our lives and in the end, when we die, we still oftentimes feel miserable because we feel we haven’t lived enough, seen enough, eaten enough, drank enough, had sex enough – all in all done enough. I am not saying that we should stop doing all of these things, since they are, of course, important as well. I just want to say that we should stop doing these things for the wrong reasons.

Since my late teen years I have often felt misunderstood. Not in the teenage way of being rebellious but just in a genuine ‘you don’t get my way of thinking’ way. This year, due to a lot of reasons, I took a semester off and for the first time in my life I had the time for soul searching. This year has been a very transformational year for me. I found out a lot about my values, my interests and why I function the way I do. I have cried so many joyful tears because finally I learned about my uniqueness and how it is all linked together. My childhood, my family, genes, personality type and so on. 

About two years ago I found out about the Myers Briggs Personality test (short MBTI).  I took it and my first result was INFP. I did see a lot of similarities to my personality but deep down I knew that it was not quite it. The next result I got was an INTP. Again a lot of similarites but not quite it. Then, a month ago when I was a lot more sure about my values, having analysed pretty much all of my behaviors and quirks, I took the test again. And I scored as an INFJ. Let me tell you: I read literally everything I could find on this type, watched all of the youtube videos regarding this topic and cried thousands of tears of relief. I finally know why I felt like a freak most of my life and why I just can not relate to most people at all. It is because (and I am not saying the following to brag about this) my personality type is literally the rarest one on the planet. It’s said that it’s only 1-1.5 percent of humanity. But now, that I know that THERE ARE people like me out there I can interact with them over the wonderful tool that is the internet. I can see that so many people struggled with exactly the same things that I did or do. That many INFJ’s are just as sensitive and that I can see all of the things that I viewed as a flaw most of my life as my strenghts. Because I believe in being different lies a lot of strenght. You have so much power to change the world with your insight and empathy. And now, that I have a positive outlet for all of this I finally began accepting my huge need for alone time. My sensitivity to bright lights, strong smells, unexpected noises, cruelty, etc.

Sure, not every INFJ is the same but the functioning is often very similar. I am not one to put people into boxes but i do believe in the fact that different types of people share some traits and ways of functioning.