Dear Me.

You keep saying you want to find yourself again, but I don’t think you’re actually missing.

I think you’re waiting for yourself.

And if I’m actually being honest with you, you aren’t going to wake up one morning suddenly loving yourself. You’re not going to have some huge breakthrough where everything clicks and suddenly you’re motivated, confident, taking care of yourself and excited about your life again.

You’re going to have to build her back in really fucking boring ways.

Get out of bed when you don’t want to. Take a shower. Brush your teeth. Drink some water. Eat something that actually makes your body feel good. Put on clothes you feel good in even if nobody is going to see you. Do your hair because you like your hair that way. Go outside. Move your body. Clean one thing instead of staring at the entire mess and deciding it’s too much.

Stop waiting until you feel better to start taking care of yourself. Taking care of yourself is part of how you’re going to feel better.

And stop making every little failure evidence that you haven’t changed.

If you spend an entire day doing nothing, okay. Tomorrow you try again. If all you have is 10%, give the fucking 10%. You already know that.

You don’t need to reinvent your entire life right now. You need to start keeping tiny promises to yourself.

That’s it.

Because you’ve spent a lot of your life being incredibly good at showing up for other people. You’ll inconvenience yourself. Lose sleep. Rearrange your day. Remember the tiny details. Make sure everyone is okay. You’ll defend the people you love even when you’re pissed at them.

So start putting yourself on that list.

Not at the top every second. That’s not realistic. Just on the fucking list.

Talk to yourself like you’re someone you actually like. Celebrate the stupid little wins. Be proud when you do something today that you couldn’t make yourself do yesterday. Stop moving the goalpost every time you accomplish something just so you can tell yourself it wasn’t enough.

And for fuck’s sake, stop requiring perfection before you’re allowed to be proud of yourself.

You don’t need someone else to notice you’re doing better before it counts.

You noticed.

You got up.
You did the thing.
You tried.
You kept a promise to yourself.
You made one decision that the version of you six months from now will be grateful for.

Count it.

I want to become my biggest fan, but that means I actually have to start rooting for myself while I’m still losing sometimes.

Anybody can love the finished product. I need to learn how to love the girl doing the work.

So tomorrow, don’t worry about becoming her. Just do one thing she’d be proud of. Then do it again the next day.

That’s how I’m going to find her.

Not all at once. Little by little. Until one day I realize I wasn’t trying to find myself anymore.

I was building someone I could finally fucking count on.

Me.