Hello there!
I would like to dedicate this episode to a few
(maybe more than a few) people just from the fact that they’ve supported these
episodes in very simple but very meaningful ways. They shall be found in the
P.S. section because, gosh, if I actually start this episode mentioning them, I
would not be able to stop. *sigh*
So! This is episode 20 and the fact that I’ve
made it this far, with 80 more episodes to go before I die, we are going to celebrate
by covering a very important idea that I believe we all need to learn and
embrace as people.
I’m going to start with the simple statement that
I love myself. Haha. Yeap. I do.
I love myself for a lot of reasons. I am alive. I
have emotions. I’m young and naïve and inexperienced. I’m not a total idiot.
I’m not a total smartypants. I have people that love me and I have people I
love. There will be times when I feel weak and times when I need to be strong.
I am human. And I will die one day so if and when I lie in my deathbed with the
realization that I never truly appreciated the life I had, that I never
appreciated me, the one that’s living this life in the first place, then I
hadn’t really lived.
It took me all of the past two months to realize
this during the period of time that I got to meet a wonderful person, a
wonderful friend. As time passed and as I spent more and more time with him, I
began to realize that my happiness gradually became dependent on him. Whether he
replied to my text yet or whether he was as interested in my company as I was
in his, the gradual growth in how dependent my happiness was on him scared me. Not
only that but the words he would say would affect me so much. It would affect
my mood to either unexpectedly high or low levels. It was… it was pathetic. I
became pathetic. And my patheticness made me realize, “Ngoc. There’s more to
this. More to why this dependency is
freaking you out.” And there was a
reason.
What I haven’t told you so far is that I would compulsively
search for words from him that would make me feel better. I would look to him
for reassurance of my own insecurities, my emotions, who I am, and each time
that he did say something along those lines, it would make my heart swell in
happiness but then after, after the high of it wore off, I began to feel empty again
as if I needed to be refilled. As if I couldn’t get enough of the reassurance he
gave me and then this feeling grew to a hunger almost. And it was this hunger
that snapped me out of this cycle because I realized I needed to be my own source
of reassurance. I needed to be strong on my own and stop outsourcing the food
to feed my own self-esteem and strength. So that made me wonder: Why wasn’t I
able to do that for myself? Why are my emotions, why is my happiness, so
dependent on this person? Why can’t I be my own source of happiness? And what
is this emotional dependency really saying about me?
It took plenty of self-reflection but the short
of it is, I lacked a sufficient amount of self-love.
Yeah. I know. Cheesy. But I wished I had known this sooner. I wished I had
known that I was amazing already in my own right and while it is wonderful to
be verbally reassured of my own awesomeness all the time, it’d be even better
if I can do that on my own.
So…. what does self-love even mean you wonder (or
not, because well, its name is self-explanatory ahah)?
Self-love means that you’re able to feed yourself
despite whatever happens around you. You’re able to feed your own esteem and
power and strength just through the simple act of appreciating yourself, your
weaknesses, your strengths, your mistakes, your past, present, future, all that
make you who you are. Self-love is simply appreciating you, living every day by
celebrating your own existence, and realizing that while you aren’t perfect and
probably make a huge amount of mistakes that you don’t even want to mention
because if you do you’ll burst into a million shards of emotional instability,
you are you. And by just being you, by living as you, and by being here in this moment doing whatever you’re doing,
that is enough. There is no need to prove yourself to anyone right now. The
only person you should be proving yourself to is, you guessed it my friends, you. Because at the end of the day,
after everything is done and you turn off all the lights in the house and head
for bed from a whole day of work and worth, you’re going to lie yourself down
and look into this vast expanse of darkness around you, realizing that in the
end, even the end of a day, all you really have is yourself. When you close
your eyes and begin to even out your breath to head to the realm of dreams, all
you have is yourself, this body that’s putting weight on the mattress, this
mind that thought of thoughts and ran a million miles of information that day,
this heart that beat to keep you alive and the same heart that you metaphorically
use to care and love the important people in your life. You have all that and
more. And that is us. We are both flesh and bone and mind and heart. And it’s
about time we appreciate that. Give yourself a break and freaking love
yourself. We both know you’re not perfect, but we also both know that you’re here
right now, alive (or not??) and living and breathing and thinking and loving
and that’s beautiful. That’s all that matters. Just know that.
Know that for me.
I warn you though. Self-love, self-appreciation,
call it what you will, isn’t something you can achieve overnight. It’s a
process and that means it’ll take time. You’ll need time to reflect on who you
are. But if you’re the type of person that can achieve it overnight, that’s
amazing (!). For everyone else, myself included, it takes time, plenty of time
and silence for that self-reflection. And I have full faith that you can
achieve it. Because the fact that you’re here, reading this, means something.
You’re well on your well there already.
Thank you for being here this evening or morning
or afternoon and reading this. I bid you the best of luck and love.
Your most optimistic friend <3,
Ngoc
P.S. And the list of my wonderful supporters...
Luce. Thank you for… gosh, you’ve been here from
the start and the art you’ve done for a few of my episodes. Constantly checking
up on me via status and wondering when my next episode will post. All of these
little things add up and always make my day. The list goes on probably the
longest for you. And not to mention the latest “hack” you did to Episode 15
which touched my heart and… the little ways you’ve looked out for me and
others. Thank you for all of that. Just, thank you.
Daanish. I have no idea if you’re still
supporting these episodes but you seem to still scream “blog” at me and yeap,
you were there from the start as well, constantly encouraging this baby out of
me. Thank you son.
Hasan. The latest supporter who tried to convert
me to Weebly, ready to help me understand Weebly but as it turns out, no amount
of help can convert me, at least not yet. Hah. But thank you buddy.
Yen. Thank you my little baby poo. You’ve never
exactly supported me but thank you for being alive and cheering me on before
you head for bed. Thank you for being absolutely adorable even though you’re
past the age when it’s not even legal to consider you that, but you shall
always be my shiny little poop child. (Don’t hurt me.)
Angeleana. Thank you for liking all my blog posts
on Facebook. It means a lot to me actually. More than I’m comfortable
admitting. 😊
And my buddy child. Thank you for
being a wonderful friend these past two months and two days. Because while it may
seem like this whole post was attacking you in a sense, our friendship has helped
me evolve into (hopefully) someone better, someone stronger. Because “to me, there was never a
question at all.”
P.P.S. I started this blog 7 months ago with the intent of it being basic life updates on my life and how that ties in with living and being human. And then in May, with the stubborn intent of updating this every 2 to 3 days and here I am, 7 months later updating once a month. While the difference in that interval is humongous, my passion and drive to do this exists still. 100 episodes before I die, remember? Let's go.
