Sometimes I want to scream at the top of my lungs, so loudly that the earth rattles below my feet, so thunderously that cracks start to weave through the streets and swallow cars and houses and trees in their wake. Sometimes I grow tired in a world that is tireless – it is unrelenting in its efforts to mold me into a shape that is deemed acceptable, easily digestible, politically correct.
Sometimes (most of the time) I fall prey to the pressure and try to become something I’m not in an effort to be more like what I think I’m supposed to be – beautiful, smiling, sociable; a hollowed-out porcelain doll. My dresser quakes under the weight of little creams and perfumes and glosses, artificial layers of myself compacted into jars and tubes. The whole ritual of putting on makeup becomes such an integral part of my routine that I grow to feel inadequate in my own naked flesh.
Sometimes I spend hours scrolling through pictures of other people’s lives. I lay in bed with just the light of my phone emanating through the darkness, observing, judging, sometimes envying, sometimes rolling my eyes – so many emotions to be felt in such silence. I think about how many arguments have been had with no words spoken out loud, paragraphs in gray and blue bubbles that have ended relationships and formed new ones, confessed love or spewed hatred. And I realize I’ve become so comfortable with that profound silence that real life sometimes becomes too loud, too fast, too charged. I become nervous around people, flinch if someone reaches for something near me, smile too big in an attempt to hide my discomfort. When did life behind the screens of our phones become greater than life itself?
But sometimes, around the right people, I let my guard down. These are the moments I live for – the ones that transcend strained small talk with strangers, the nights where bare skin beats a face caked in makeup, where sobriety feels better than those impalpable, vodka-soaked nights I can’t remember. Where I can laugh until my whole body is shaking and no sound comes out, where I can look into the eyes of someone I love and feel understood, seen, heard.
In those moments I am reminded that I am more than a fake laugh or a pretty face or a stupid Instagram – sometimes it’s easy to lose yourself within the sea of selfies and rehearsed snapshots of fake happiness, I will try to float above the surface with my back to its depths and keep my gaze fixated on the sun, as I hope you will too.
Remember to look up, experience the world through your own eyes once in awhile and not through the lens of a camera. Don’t feel the need to document everything, preserve certain moments for yourself, treasure them in your own mind and know that they were real and genuine enough solely because you experienced them. Surround yourself with those who lift you up – live to love and be loved by them above all else. Mind you, I say this mantra as a reminder to myself just as much as I am saying it to encourage all of you.
Love yourself in all of your flawed entirety, the bits that glow, the bits that are healing, the bits that are still wounded. Love yourself. Love yourself. Love yourself.
