You will never free yourself if you don’t love yourself. If you’re stuck in self-hatred, you’re in prison, truly. There’s only one way to escape your inner dialogue permanently, and it’s not an appealing option. People numb out to dull the pain of being at war within themselves, but that pain is more powerful than any drug, and it will overtake every area of your life if you don’t face it. When the buzz wears off, whether it’s from something you ingest, buy, or partake in, guess what’s sitting there in the corner, smirking and strumming its long, thin, scalding-hot fingers? Your pain, with a hat over one eye, and its feet on the coffee table of your mind. It’ll wait for you, however long it takes.

What’s crazy is that we’ve created most of our own pain, just like we’ve created clocks and calendars and scales and money and borders and insane ideas about what it means to be successful. We’ve designed a fog that covers everything and is based around a premise, and the premise is Keeping Up with the Joneses, aka, “Why Do I Suck So Much?”  The more you buy into that ideology, the more miserable you’ll become. Because few things feel worse than comparing and contrasting yourself to other people. Healthy competition in a basketball game can be fun, but competition as a way of life is the most isolating, lonely path there is. Because you can’t trust people if you’re racing against them. You can’t be vulnerable, admit you’re scared, confused, heartbroken or hopeless if you think there’s a chance people will go for your jugular if you expose your weaknesses.

Of course it’s an upside down equation, because being vulnerable is the bravest thing there is. Putting your heart out there with the understanding it might be broken, admitting you are human, acknowledging your fear or shame or rage or grief, all these require strength. It takes effort and courage to clear the fog and see reality.  If you do, you may be faced with some pain for awhile. But if you don’t the pain will never end, and you will miss the most liberating fact of all. Look around if you need to. You won’t find any other you anywhere. You won’t walk out the door and stop at the local store and run into your very self in aisle 4. Do you know why you won’t run into yourself today, or any day, no matter how far you travel, and even if you visit every place on earth? I think you do know. Are you starting to smile a little? Is it because maybe some part of you is remembering how f&cking awesome you are? There is Only. One. You. No one on the face of this earth can be you better than you. And I mean, innately, because of just that, not even COUNTING all your particular gifts and quirks, or the way you laugh when you don’t hold it back at all, just based on the fact alone that there’s only one of you, makes you so freaking special.

So you have a choice. You can acknowledge that and start treating yourself with love and kindness, with compassion and respect. Or you can beat the crap out of yourself for not measuring up to other people. As if we’re all the same. As if we’re all meant to look the same and feel the same and act the same and follow the same path to what, exactly? Here’s something you need to know: your pain only owns you if you won’t face it. Take off the blinders, head for the couch, knock fear’s hat off its head and use the scalding-hot fingers of your pain to cut right through those chains. You do not need them. And time is a-wasting!! Happy Tuesday, get busy if you need to! And if you don’t, way to go!! Sending you love. Ally