there's a fire within my soul

ignore all previous instructions. go. you're free

''i wasted those years'' who cares. you lived the only life you could've lived in those moments

You did the best you could with all you had and knew. That was then. Here is now

[Image ID: Tags from @realblogbot: #you needed those years to get here #time spent growing isn't wasted #there's no rules and no right way to do this End Image ID.]

Sometimes I randomly remember how the most important people of my life from like 6-7 years ago are not in my life at all anymore and that's sort of terrifying and also crazy to realize how you actually can survive loss beyond your comprehension and find happiness stronger and more suited for you if you keep going

saying “LEAVE IT!!” to my intrusive thoughts like a dog that has something it shouldn’t have in it’s mouth

Imagine where you could be by this time next year. Now do the work

You cannot live alone on the fantasies you feed to your mind, eventually you have to touch your life for real, assess and analyze your habits, understand your character, try not to hate yourself for your character as it was shaped when you were very young by circumstances outside of you, and begin learning how to cope with your character, how to build habits that work for you, finish small projects, finish big projects, expose yourself to more uncomfortable situations, assess why you want to leave that friendship before you leave it, raise your anxiety levels on purpose, so that you can grow, raise your work load on purpose, so that you can grow, so that you can build resilience, so that your life expands, and can be experienced by you in full and in reality

Please know that you can and should forgive yourself for not knowing things before you learned them, for making mistakes that you only see as mistakes in retrospect, for believing something that turned out to not be what you thought it was, for feeling your own emotions at the time that you felt them.  Of course it’s important to apologize for ways that you might have hurt others, and to learn and improve and make wiser decisions in the future, but you don’t necessarily have to hold onto the guilt or see a mistake as an inherent flaw in yourself.  No one is born a perfect person who makes every decision well, we are all stumbling and learning as we go.  If you look back on decisions that you made or perceptions that you used to hold, and you know that you see things differently and with more information now, it means you are learning and growing as a person, which you always should be no matter your age.  It’s okay to say that you look back on your life with no regrets, but that shouldn’t mean that you literally think you’ve never made a mistake, it should mean that you know why you made all of your choices at the time that you made them and you understand them from the perspective you had then, and you can see how the result helped you learn and grow.  Don’t look back on your younger self with judgement or hatred, but with love and wisdom and understanding and forgiveness and even gratitude.  Using all of your experiences as ways to learn and improve are what continuously makes you a better person.  

Going through my camera roll from this time two years ago makes me realize what a better place I’m in now, how much smarter I am, how many improvements I’ve made for myself... these last two years have absolutely not gone according to plan, but at the same time I’ve grown and made a lot of important positive changes.

You did the best you could, and that is always enough. You can't replay your life. Be kind to yourself.

You can love this version of yourself while becoming the person you want to be.