you’ll get better

flo | they/he | here i write comforting letters to myself and others | icon from @artistyicons

[comfort-letters]

sometimes it’s easier to be kind to others than to be kind to yourself.

i often love and appreciate and find beautiful and endearing in others the exact same traits i hate in myself. i don’t really know what to do about it still, but i like thinking that there are probably other people who look at the exact traits i hate in myself and find them beautiful and endearing, even if i can’t see myself that way.

i guess it makes me feel better.

[comfort-letters]

sometimes what you’re doing is not a perfect way of dealing with things, of recovery, or of self-acceptance, and it’s okay.

sometimes what you’re doing might seem small and unimportant and not significant enough, not radical enough, not enough of a change; sometimes, it’s a temporary choice, a way to get by, to survive; sometimes, it’s slow, or you’re dealing with too much at once.

either way, sometimes the way you’re dealing with things isn’t a perfect one, but it’s still the best one among the options you currently have. it doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be all at once, it also doesn’t have to be the only way of dealing with things forever -- do what you can do to get better. change will come.

[natsyme]

banana cupcakes 🍌 ━  tumblr theme; {+ version 2.0}

[ live preview ] 

Simple and cute theme with clamps on posts 📌. This theme features: 

custom: posts width, icon size & border style

4 extra links 

2 font sizes

pagination or infinite scroll 

optional: title, shadow, favicon, cursor

show / hide captions & tags

Get the code under the cut

Keep reading

[comfort-letters]

your pain isn’t in any way less real because it could’ve been worse.

anything could’ve been worse, really, but you don’t deserve to be hurt. your pain is still real even if other people suffer more. other people’s pain doesn’t make your own non-existent.

we react to different things in different ways, and if you’re hurt, you don’t have to justify it to yourself by saying it was bad enough. maybe it wouldn’t have hurt someone else that much, but you are you, not someone else.

maybe it could’ve been worse, but you’re still hurt. focus on yourself.

[comfort-letters]

analyzing and understanding your feelings is good and helpful, but sometimes, when you’re trying to analyze and systematize every little bit of your experience and it’s just painful, remember:

sometimes, feelings are just feelings, and if your wondering and overthinking doesn’t make you understand them better, the best thing to do is just let them be

[comfort-letters]

since i constantly swing between “it’s no big deal” and “it’s horrible”:

you don’t have to decide whether or not the people who’ve hurt you deserve your forgiveness right now. you don’t have to decide whether they were absolutely, unquestionably horrible or just mistaken while having the right intentions. 

if thinking about this hurts you, if it’s uncomfortable, if it’s painful, i’m here to remind you: it’s not what matters. what matters is you, hurt but alive, hurt but trying. you don’t have to figure them out or analyze them: focus on yourself, your own comfort and healing -- that’s what is really important. 

[comfort-letters]

it’s okay not to know things.

you aren’t born with the knowledge of everything in the world or of yourself. you don’t have to know what you want to look like or what your name is or what you think about this thing or that thing. it’s not the end of the world if you don’t know that. it’s okay, you’ll get there, you’ll understand more, you will never know everything, and that’s okay as well.

[comfort-letters]

trauma is trauma is trauma is trauma is trauma is trauma is trauma is trauma is trauma is trauma is trauma

[comfort-letters]

you don’t have to know why they did it.

you also don’t have to think about why they did it, what made them this way, whether or not it was intentional, a mistake, whether you could’ve changed it, whatever. you can if it makes it better, but you don’t have to.

in the end of the day, sometimes the answer is irrelevant. you’re hurt. they’ve hurt you. that’s what matters. maybe they didn’t mean it, but it doesn’t make your pain go away. maybe they went through something horrible themselves, but it doesn’t make your pain go away. and if wondering whether or not there’s an excuse for their behavior only hurts you, you don’t have to think about it at all.

[comfort-letters]

to any teen who might need this: no, this adult trying to get into a relationship with you is not the only person who understands you. they’re lying.

[comfort-letters]

you’re not responsible for your parents’ actions.

when your parents make decisions, it’s their responsibility, not yours. when they decided to have a child, it was their decision and their responsibility, not yours. their actions towards you have always been their actions and their choices, not yours.

your parents’ past trauma, or your parents’ illnesses, or your parents’ unhappiness are not your fault. you’re not responsible for what happened to them and if that influences their relationship with you in ways that hurt you, it’s not your fault.

your parents’ past and their choices and decisions are their own, not yours. you had no say in them, and you’re not responsible for them.

[comfort-letters]

you know what? what happened to you wasn’t fair or deserved. it’s not a punishment for something being wrong with you, it’s not your fault. there’s no ‘if’s and ‘but’s, it’s not your fault, you didn’t deserve it.

[comfort-letters]

you can be afraid of getting better.

you can hate your illness with all your heart and still be afraid of getting better. because what if you’re better because you’ve been faking it, what if you’re better because it wasn’t that bad, what if feeling better leaves you lost and confused because what if all you knew about yourself was just your illness.

(you can hate yourself for this and still be afraid of getting better. feelings aren’t right or wrong, they just are)

it’s okay if you’re afraid. be afraid but do it anyway, because there’s you outside your illness, because there’s life outside your illness, because you’ll be glad to be better, i promise

[comfort-letters]

you not being able to love yourself unconditionally and wholeheartedly doesn’t mean no-one else can do so.

take care of yourself as much as you can, try to be okay with yourself, try not to hate yourself, try to find things you like about yourself, but don’t be afraid that your journey to self love and acceptance being difficult means you’re unlovable.

you’ll be loved. even if you don’t love and accept yourself entirely, even if you’re better at loving another person fully than at loving yourself, you will be loved and supported and cared about. recover, by all means work towards self acceptance, but don’t be aftraid — you’re not unlovable until you’re a beam of perfect self love.

[comfort-letters]

you’re allowed not to know what to think about your parents. you’re allowed to have a complicated relationship with them.

you can love your parents, but you don’t have to. you can love them even if they’ve hurt you — feelings are not right or wrong, they just are. you don’t have to love your parents just because you have a roof over your head or food or just because they do nice things to you sometimes. no matter what people around you say, you don’t have to love your parents just because you’re still alive or because there could be physical abuse but there wasn’t or because it could’ve been worse.

you can hate your parents, but you don’t have to. it’s okay if you hate them because they’ve hurt you, and it’s okay if you don’t think you feel anything about them at all. feelings aren’t right or wrong, they just are.

you can forgive them. you can never forgive them. you can see that what they did was not intentional or was a consequence of their own trauma they never dealt with and choose to forgive them for it. you can also never forgive them, because, intentional or not, explainable or not, their actions hurt you. or maybe it was in fact intentional. it’s okay if you forgive them still, and it’s okay if you don’t.

it’s okay if you don’t know what to feel about your parents. it’s okay if you’re still not sure if you can call it abuse. it’s okay if you struggle with explaining it because you think others have dealt with worse or because it might not have been intentional or anything else of that sort. it’s okay if you don’t want to think about it while you still live with them. you’ll get there, you’ll make your decisions, you’re figure it out. your feelings are not wrong, they just are.

[comfort-letters]

sometimes even positive change will leave you disappointed.

it’ll be too slow and not enough, it’ll be one tiny step in years, it’ll take ages to get better and you absolutely will take it for granted because the fact that it got better doesn’t mean it’s good or even okay. sometimes things will get better and you’ll still feel bad.

but it doesn’t mean all is pointless. you might hate how much time recovery takes, you might feel like everyone’s living their lives happily now while you only have that far away “then later” that will truly match their happiness (not true; don’t think of life this way, it only hurts), but it’s not pointless. your “better” when you are still hurting would perhaps leave your past selves hopeful because you don’t remember how it was back then (i didn’t believe I’d ever get to have short hair; it didn’t cure my depression or stop me from being dysphoric, but younger me would be starry eyed to see me). you’ll move slowly, and you’ll be disappointed sometimes, and your “better” won’t be okay immediately, but one day you’ll look back and realize how far you’ve come. be proud of that.

[comfort-letters]

don’t be afraid of feeling good. i know it sounds stupid because you want to recover, you’re supposed to want to feel good, but still.

you might be afraid that you feeling good (or even just okay or not bad) at some point means you’re not struggling (it’s not so). you might be afraid that even a second spent in anything other than complete misery means you’re not suffering enough to be deserving of support (it’s not so). you might be even afraid of actually recovering because you don’t know if there’s any you outside of your illness (there is, i promise).

but please remember you are deserving of support, please remember feeling good at some point doesn’t mean your suffering didn’t actually happen, please remember you’re bigger than your illness. don’t be afraid of feeling good, don’t be afraid of feeling okay. take care.