This Is How You’ll Save Yourself

People will tell you what you want to hear in order to gain your favor. They will spit at you tired clichés and pats on the back in the form of words you’ve heard a million times before and you’ll walk away feeling momentarily soothed. You won’t be any worse off, really, by listening to people who will simply repeat back to you axioms that do nothing but put a band-aid over your wounds. It will feel airy, light, at first. You will feel that comfortable settling in your bones which tells you that you’re alright for now, you’ve staved off another day of having to confront yourself. People will try to save you from your own healing. People will try to circumvent your process in order to get you to like them. People will fluff up advice that sounds good in theory, but tends to run thin, a puff of smoke, when that advice is put up to the test of real life application. Do not listen to people who tell you what you want to hear.

You are meant to be angry. This is when you heal. This is when you move on. You are meant to be riled up and pushed and brought out of that little comfortable bubble where you think you know everything. You don’t know everything. You know the exact amount that you know right now. Can you even fathom how much you don’t know about yourself and the world yet? You can’t fathom it because it is literally unfathomable how much you don’t know.

Do not listen to people who think they have all the answers. Nobody is your savior, except you and perhaps a God you do or do not pray to. Read things that make you feel, that challenge what you think you know. Get fired up. Push yourself beyond those ten feet in front of you. Let yourself be pissed the fuck off. Maybe if you get angry enough, you’ll change your damn life. Maybe if you let yourself be consumed by envy or anger or frustration or disappointment, you will finally do what it takes to make yourself happy.

Get deep with yourself. Figure out why you hate your life or why you can’t love properly or what it is that keeps you from getting close to yourself and other people. Figure out why you are so fiercely protective over thinking you know everything. Let yourself doubt everything. Let yourself be uncertain forever. Let yourself do what you’re born to do: grow. Grow. Grow out of who you used to be. Don’t buckle down with yourself and become so stubborn that you can’t even see past your own pain.

Do not just look for things to only inspire you positively. Look for things to enrage you, that will inspire a passion inside of you. Find ways to extract and express that passion without lashing out at others. Simple-minded, wounded people lash out at others to protect themselves. Let yourself be unprotected. Be vulnerable and you will have nothing left to protect, nothing left to lash out against. Be open to being wrong. Let yourself be wrong. Be wrong all the time! Let yourself be insecure. Be insecure all the time! This means you’re growing. You’re learning. You’re expanding.

Do not let other people carry your burdens. That is not for your lover, your family, or your friends to do for you. You must shoulder the weight of your own life and that’s okay. This is how you find true happiness. This is how you believe in yourself. This is how you depend on yourself. Pull people into your life to experience the joy of connection. They do not need to serve you in any way except for that. Give yourself to them in this same manner, but do not expect them to save you. You save yourself. You make yourself happy. You accept yourself. You do that for you. You let others experience you. You do not make them your need, your sustenance, your lifeline.

Do not let yourself be consumed by this need to be positive all the time. Do not deny yourself the simple pleasure of wallowing, of letting yourself be overcome with darkness. There is no positive emotion worth feeling without first feeling its negative counterpart. Your suffering—and your rise from it—will define you. Your suffering, your darkness, your pain, and your eventual resiliency and healing will be your most treasured parts of you. Do not avoid heartbreak. Do not avoid disappointment. Do not avoid failure. Do not avoid the call to be negative. Your rise from these ashes will be the value of your life. These things will teach you what you can withstand, what you’re capable of. Find ways to test your strength. Build your fucking emotional muscles and do that by withstanding your pain, by facing it, by pulling that pain onto your shoulders and finding the strength to carry it. That fucking pain belongs to you. You know what else belongs to you? When you heal. When you grow. When you move on.

Do not live your life in avoidance of the truth about the world and yourself. Do not distract away the parts of you that you are ashamed of, the pain you have to carry with you, the past you haven’t healed yet, the blame you can’t get off your tongue. Feel it all. Let it wash over you. Stew in that. Let it overcome you completely. Do not find things to read or people to talk to who will try to wash away that process for you. Life can be ugly and that’s okay. It’s not here to serve you. You are here to experience life as a human being and so, experience it. Experience it by allowing it all, by opening yourself to it, by letting yourself be transformed.

You find your strength and your happiness by standing up to yourself and confronting whatever it is that keeps you from pure love. You can’t do this without your anger. You can’t do this without your envy. You can’t do this without your grief or pain or suffering. You just can’t. And that’s the point. The point isn’t to absolve yourself of these things. The point is to allow yourself these things, to be one with them, to spend your moments healing and growing and feeling the joy that comes from no longer spending a life avoiding yourself. This is your story. This is your process. This is what you’ve come here to do. Don’t you dare waste it away.