Love Yourself

Dear Casey,

This is a note to yourself: you are strong, you will be okay. No matter how bleak the whole situation may seem, you will get through this and come out stronger than ever. You have great friends and family around that care and support you very much, they are gonna be there to pick you up when you come crashing down. Have faith and believe in that, believe in yourself.

Everyone has been telling you things that you already know, you know that you need to learn to love yourself, you need to learn to put yourself first and work on yourself and not just pour everything in your relationship, relationships ain't everything. You always turn to relationships to keep you safe and secure, you always look to relationships as the beacon of hope in your life, you depend on them to be there for you, you depend on them to help you with your troubles. It's time you learn to focus on yourself and to deal with your own troubles or else you'll never grow. You always think you are more mature than people your age but in fact, you are not, you tend to shy away from your trouble, you always hide behind someone else in hope that they will help you solve your problems. This in turns destroys your relationship as you are too dependent on someone else for your happiness and security. The same cycle repeats in every relationship, you'll end up in the same predicament over and over again unless you actually learn from your past and do something about it.

It's okay to put yourself first, it's okay to love yourself,  you are important and it's okay to be selfish. Work on yourself, it's about you, it's always been about you. Don't belittle yourself just to accommodate others in your life, don't depreciate your self-worth. You are so afraid of being left behind and having people walk out your life, that you claw onto them and beg them desperately to stay, compromising on your values and putting yourself down over and over for a temporary fix. Learn to value yourself highly, and believe that people should want to be in your life for the person that you are and not the person they wish for you to be.

It's not wrong to be in a relationship, you are not selfish for wanting both, you can have both but just don't compromise blindly for the sake of a relationship. You've tried your best to save this relationship, you did, you really did, you need to accept that you've done everything in your power but if at the end of the day, if he is not willing to carry on, there's nothing you can do, it's beyond you. You can only accept it and move on. It's not your fault, there's no rights and wrongs and there's no reason to blame yourself for it.

Only when you learn to love yourself that you will be capable of loving someone else. This is gonna be a slow, long and hard journey. You will suffer, you will feel pain, you will struggle, you will wanna give up. But remember at the end of every tunnel, there will always be light. You will get there eventually, have faith and believe.

Love,
Casey

Struggling with Insecurities

This is not the first time that I talked about insecurities on my blog. I've always struggled with insecurity my whole life, the feeling that I don't belong, the feeling that I'm secondary, the feeling that I'm disposal and unimportant. There's always been ups and downs, for the most part, I've been feeling alright for the past few years, it's been a while since I've felt so insecure with myself, I've been doubting myself a lot lately, constantly questioning my self-worth. I've spoken to people about it to the point where I feel like I'm just a burden to the people around me, I know that there are always people around me that will care, but I'm just at the stage where I'm feeling awfully helpless and tired of talking about my own feelings. Again, I'm drowning in my own sorrow, a feeling that I'm way too familiar with, it's that old friend that I haven't had around for years. I'm aware that my own sanity and security shouldn't fall to other people's hand, it shouldn't be other people's responsibility to lift me up in life and it's not their responsibility to provide me with the security and safety in life. However, in actual fact, it's just hard to do that by myself when I'm feeling so emotionally compromised. I'm just caught between doing the right thing and my feeling at the moment.

I honestly don't know how long is this cycle gonna last. I know that eventually, I'll be alright, but at what cost? that's the question. How many people truly understand and accept what I'm feeling emotionally now, would people just think that I'm overthinking and shoot me down for it? that's something that I worry about, I'm asking myself "maybe I'm just making this too big of a deal than it really is? maybe I should just swallow it all down and maybe it'll be alright?" For the moment, I'm tired of trying to convince myself that I'm okay even though I know that I'm not. I'm keeping people at arm's length, I just don't know how to face people at the moment, I don't want people to feel like "oh there he goes again" I would probably feel that way about myself. This is also probably one of my own defence mechanism, where it's easier to just push people away, and when they eventually leave, I'll at least braced for it. I'll be able to convince myself that I knew this day is gonna come and it might hurt less when that day comes.

Writing this is probably a cry for help, hoping that someone would be willing to tell me that it's gonna be okay and that they would stick around even when I don't believe that. But unfortunately, I don't think anyone is gonna see this, I'll just end up wallowing in my own sorrow.

7 Years Later

It's been 7 years since I last wrote on this blog, a lot has changed since. I've grown older, I'm in another relationship with someone else, I'm pursuing my studies in a degree program and I've made career changes. These are all things beyond my expectations, things that I didn't think were possible 7 years ago. Reading back at the old post I've made in this blog, I was such a different person then, I was childish, emotional and depressed, things that mattered so much then didn't seem to matter at all now. I wished I was there to tell my younger self that, that everything is gonna be okay, that one day you'll be fine, you'll actually be fine in life. 

I wouldn't say that I'm optimistic now but I try to stay hopeful, the emotions are still there, still emotional but more contained than I used to be. Looking back, I can see that I've been very depressed in my teenage years, I shut the world out of my life most of the time. I didn't believe that I have people around me that cared about me, I cling onto things for the sake of security. And I know I've come a long way since. 

I found the courage to move on from my previous relationship, to pick myself up from that. I found the courage to pursue my studies, something that I avoided for so long. A topic that wouldn't even discuss without shutting myself down, without doubting my self-worth. I'm glad that I found the courage over the years to do all these. The old me wouldn't have seen the light at the end of the tunnel. 

I'm also blessed and privileged to be a wonderful support system around me. Through tough times, I come to realise that there are people around me that genuinely cared for my wellbeing. This is also something that struggled with since my teenage years, I've always felt so helpless, never believing that anyone cared. 

So now, at the age of 28, I can say that I'm doing okay, my views on life aren't as grey as it used to be. Even when I doubt myself, deep down I know that I'm capable of getting through it, no matter how painful it is. I just need to start believing in myself more, that I'm worth something.