cynosure

• Every unpleasant situation or emotion is an opportunity for growth. We usually realize that in hindsight (or unfortunately for some of us, never do and keep on complaining), but when we get to the point where we realize, in the middle of the emotion…

     ”Wow… I’m feeling this way because I need to let go of my ego a little bit,”
  “I’m blaming her because I don’t want to admit that my own personality needs work,”
  “I’m afraid of losing him because I still want to be more confident than I am,”

     … then instead of being immobilized by unhappiness or disappointment, we learn, in the moment. We recognize life’s lesson at that present time and if we figure out how, we can grow as remarkable individuals almost right away.

• Whenever you think negatively of someone else, you’re actually thinking negatively of yourself.
• How can you love anyone else if you haven’t even learned how to love the first and only person you’ve lived with for your whole entire life?
• ‎”You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.”
  Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
• I randomly unearthed the skeleton of an unfinished poem from a couple of years ago, scrawled on an index card:
  

     I am Warrior
  I wear my battle scars with pride
  stretch marks on my bosom and
  cellulite on my thighs

• This beautiful video is worth watching, then saving to watch again (& again) on a solitary day:

     The “watch a movie alone” & “take yourself out to dinner” advice is definitely worth taking. Go where YOU want to go, watch what YOU want to watch, & eat what YOU want to eat without having to compromise!

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I’m grateful for all the depression, all the traumas, all the pain, all the disordered eating and all the sadness; without it, I wouldn’t have learned to fight, fight to be happy, be determined, persevere, overcome my own negativity, my own darkness.

Without it, I wouldn’t have learned to love eating, to love food, to really learn how to enjoy nourishing my body and taking care of myself. I wouldn’t have learned to be healthy, eat healthily, live healthily. And I wouldn’t have wanted to.

Without it, I wouldn’t have learned to eventually love life, to live in the present, to stop regretting, to stop worrying.

I wouldn’t have learned to carry on despite countless failures in the past; let go of the times I felt like I had ruined myself;

I wouldn’t have learned to not only love others but just as importantly, love myself.

I’m grateful for all the things in my past that I once regretted to the ends of the earth, that I once blamed myself for, despised myself for, wanted to destroy myself for.

Without the desperation that came with being up to my waist in sorrow, self-damaging thinking, destruction… I would never have been moved to change.

Without all the hurt, anger, frustration, guilt, ridiculously self-disparaging thoughts, and myriad of other uncomfortable or terrible feelings… and without the constant obstacles of the present that I now see as growth opportunities… I wouldn’t have learned to be strong, and I wouldn’t have had a reason to even try.

I’m grateful for everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. Even if it kind of sucked at the time, and might not be so cheery in the future.

What are you grateful for?

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I woke up this morning four hours past my waketime. I had wanted to go on a long run today, to clear my head. I hadn’t run much in the past week or so. But I woke up too late. The sun was already stretching across the land and it was getting hot soon.

Plus, I felt a weight in my stomach. My after-dinner snack last night of lots and lots of cornbread, vegan cream cheese, dates, three too many skewers of Japanese dango with lots of sugary additives… The vegan cream cheese especially, as I put it, kicked my digestive system’s ass. I had overslept. I felt nauseous, groggy. My abdomen even ached and cramped and protested. Still, I did not regret. I accepted it. I wanted to eat more these few days to get more fuel anyway.

I drank water. A lot of it. My stomach felt like it was emptying eventually. I wanted to eat. I wanted to make sweet cornbread. Eat a bowl of oatmeal. I wanted to be hungry so I could eat.

But I didn’t wait for hunger, which on days like these can come like a lover in the night, forcing me to be patient the whole day. I didn’t want to wait. Instead, I ate half a pan of the plain cornbread I made the day before with gratuitous amounts of agave syrup and Earth Balance. And then multiple bowls of pumpkin flaxseed cereal (I hate cereal) with soy milk and peanut butter and banana. I thought it would taste like the oh-so-familiar oatmeal I loved to eat, with mashed banana and peanut butter on the spoon. It didn’t. But I kept on eating.

All before noon. All before I was to go to my neighbor’s house to play board games with a group of friends.

And I had that sinking feeling in my stomach, the literal feeling of the weight of the equivalent of several meals inside. The kind of feeling, that feeling of a binge, that in the past made me want to give up everything. Stay inside. Blow off my friends and our plans. Avoid seeing anyone, I felt too disgusting. Eat more, maybe. Grovel on the bed with a headache and bemoan a wasted day. I had ruined an entire day with the actions of a few minutes.

At least, that’s what I would have done. A couple years ago, maybe. A couple of months ago, even. Something I had done countless times in the past– avoided social contact as much as possible, for fear of this feeling. This feeling of self-disgust and grossness and being literally weighed down and feeling sick and tired from digesting, from too much food in too little time.

But this time, I didn’t.

I gathered up my stuff and left and played board games with friends for five hours. My energy level dipped back up to normal, then down again as my body continued to work hard digesting the sudden amount of food with which I had presented it. But I did it– I left my house during a moment I could have said, “Why not hole up and feel bad about myself and do nothing about it.” I didn’t eat while I was there because I wasn’t hungry yet. I didn’t let the actions of the already far away past (this morning) ruin my day. I didn’t let myself be immobilized by my own judgments about what had already happened. I didn’t say, “Well, today’s ruined anyway, might as well eat myself to the point of wanting to die.”

Instead, I moved on.

And I just came home. And I contemplated eating more. Cornbread dipped in an olive oil and spice marinade this time, maybe. Or maybe I’d make sweet cornbread and eat all of that. Maybe I’d eat some strawberries. Maybe I’d eat slices of tomato, make sweet potato fries, dip them in BBQ sauce leftover by a recent guest just because I didn’t want to waste it.

Or maybe I could wait until I’m hungry again. Continue to take care of my body. Because I am healthy. I am strong. And I love myself.

I chose love and health and strength.

And joy in the only thing that ever really exists: the present.

Today is the best day of your life. This moment, the best moment.

Because it’s the only moment you’re living in right now.

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A manifesto.

We don’t have to follow in our mother and father’s footsteps.
We don’t have to treat our children the same way we were raised.
We don’t have to teach them how to fear, how to worry, how to dislike themselves, how to forget how to dream and play and imagine and live in the moment.

We don’t have to abuse ourselves, everyone we encounter, or the planet that provides us with a home.

We don’t have to believe that talent or skills or fulfillment or contentment lie outside of us in fancy equipment or expensive gadgets.
We don’t have to believe that happiness lies within the accumulation of material stuff. Or anything external at all.

We don’t have to follow the rules that someone else wrote out years ago, expecting us to obey without question.
We don’t have to listen to the shoulds or should nots.
We don’t have to live up to anyone else’s standards.

We don’t have to mistreat the earth, pollute the sea with plastic, waste water, or waste our money.

We don’t have to hate ourselves, feel depressed or guilty, not take care of ourselves, feel terrible when things don’t go our way, punish ourselves, let the external dictate our emotions, think negative thoughts.
We don’t have to believe we’re weak, give up when things get tough, lose hope in life when it’s just trying to teach us something.
We don’t have to believe we can’t be happy just loving and being ourselves.

We don’t have to judge others before we even get to know them, hate others because they’re not like us, hold grudges, blame others for our circumstances.
We don’t have to believe that are either “good” or “bad”, or that “evil people” exist at all.
We don’t have to put ourselves in neat little boxes, give ourselves labels of what we are and what we aren’t, pigeonhole everyone else who we think is “different”, and distance “us” from “them”.
We don’t have to believe that there even is a “them” separate from “us” to begin with.

We don’t have to believe we’re not beautiful just because we have short legs, long legs, no butt, big butt, flabby arms, strong arms, short fingers, long necks, big ears, bushy eyebrows, no eyebrows, big feet, thick feet, wide feet, small hands, short hair, long hair, frizzy hair, straight hair, nappy hair, little hair, no hair, stretchmarks and cellulite.
We don’t have to believe we’re not beautiful because the movies and the magazines and the media tell us a terrible untruth.

We don’t have to believe we’re just a number on a scale, a shirt, or a driver’s license. We don’t have to define ourselves by the brands we wear, the color of our hair, or anything outside of our souls.

We don’t have to believe we’re not smart just because they told us we weren’t, because we don’t speak ten languages, didn’t do well on the SAT, don’t get straight As, never went to college, didn’t make the honor roll, completely tanked a class or test or two or three, refused to accept that a dogmatic professor was absolutely right, didn’t graduate middle school, would rather chase our dreams than sit at a desk.

We don’t have to deny our natural selves.
We don’t have to hold back our hunger, our laughter, our flatulence. Our sweat, our scent, our scars. Our sexiness, our sexuality, our sex drive. Our menstruation, our erections, our wet dreams, our fun dreams, our tears.

We don’t have to eat mindlessly just because advertisements and marketing aimed to make us unhealthy say so.
We don’t have to use self-harming addictions to numb ourselves or escape from our lives.

We don’t have to be ashamed of our unshaved legs, unperfumed armpits, unpainted fingernails, untrimmed toenails, unstyled hair, unpainted faces.

We don’t have to hide our true beauty.
We don’t have to hide who we are.
We don’t have to wear the clothes, have the body, fit the size, look like the actor or the model.

We don’t have to be scared anymore. Of flying, of being wonderful, of being ourselves, of talking to new and exciting people, of going for what you thought impossible, of asking that cute sweetie out, of rejection, of acceptance, of trusting ourselves and others, of letting go, of healing, of moving on, of loving and living limitlessly.

We don’t have to listen to our brother, sister, mother, father, best friend, stranger, lover, spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, teacher, mentor, therapist, cousin, who tells us we’re not good enough– no matter how much we love them.
We don’t have to believe a bar of “good enough” even exists.

We don’t have to suppress, deny, or otherwise squelch our awesomeness.

We don’t have to pretend anymore. Not for a single second longer.

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The first time I chopped off all (well, most) of my hair, I was 13.

That weekend, I was going to dress up as Tokyo Babylon Sumeragi Subaru, a CLAMP character– for my first comic convention. (Incidentally, Subaru means Pleiades in Japanese, ahem…)

It was the first time I got my hair cut by someone other than my mom, with whose skills I had been less than satisfied as of late. I handed the lady at SuperCuts a print-out of a manga scan of Subaru and his twin sister, Hokuto, and she told me she couldn’t use it– it was a “comic book character, for deity’s sake!” She would not give me the faux-sideburns that the character required– instead, she proceeded to hack off everything into something much less cool than a bowl cut.

I looked like a boy. (Wasn’t that the goal, anyway?) No matter. I was mortified. I had Chinese school in an hour. Could I get by with wearing a hat?

And more than just feeling mortified, I was incredibly depressed every time I looked in the mirror. I felt terrible about the loss of my hair. At least before I had my hair cut, I didn’t look too bad.

Worse, being that it was middle school (the new version of high school in terms of being the epitome of peer pressure and meanness– kids start to mature so much earlier these days!), I became the brunt of bullying.

Not just being teased that I looked like a guy (and dressed like one already, too). Instead, I was “worse”– I was “a lesbian”, they jeered, staring at me and my hair with disdain, treating me like something absolutely grotesque.

For the rest of 8th grade I was ridiculed for looking “not straight”. I didn’t understand; why could the girls with makeup and long hair slap each other’s butts, laughing, and hug each other tight… but if I hugged my best friend, people would look at me as if I were not just weird but disgusting? Because I didn’t wear cute clothes or “look” like a girl?

I had serious gender identity crises. Why did I see a cute guy that I might even be attracted to, when I looked in the mirror? Why, if I tried to see myself as female, I thought I was ugly?

After a while, though, I became comfortable with my short-haired self, even reveled in the fact that I didn’t look like everyone else– but eventually decided to grow out my hair, citing a goal to grow enough hair to donate to Locks of Love, and the fact that I had never really grown out my hair past a certain length.

The second time I chopped off all my hair was the year I turned 18. I felt like I had to reclaim a part of myself somehow before I teetered towards the first number of “adulthood”– I was heart and stomach deep within an eating disorder, a different kind of depression I didn’t understand, a sort of quiet numbness that made me feel hollow– I felt like having short hair again was like coming back to myself, to the self that actually knew how to feel once upon a time, knew how to cry bucketloads instead of being a stone. Anything better than the soul-paralyzed anesthetic I constantly felt then.

So I took a pair of scissors (I never trusted SuperCuts again…) and chopped off my hair. Unevenly and unperfectly, but I did it.

I also dyed my hair black, the last time I ever dyed my hair, and the first time my hair was its “natural” color in 7 years. (I had dyed my hair at least once or twice per year ever since I was 11, convinced that black was just “so boring!”)

And I felt like I transformed somehow. I felt like I returned to my real self a little bit. But I don’t know what I was trying to accomplish. I don’t know if I saw it as a panacea for all my problems at the time. It was still a symbolic action for me, though. Something changed.

And then I grew out my hair again. I wanted to dress up as Tifa Lockhart with my natural hair at least once in my life, and I still wanted to see how long I could grow it out.

Recently, though, I’ve gotten a little sick of having so much hair. I love my hair, surely, but it becomes a burden when I run, it rarely behaves, and it always seems to get in the way. Even after my first haircut this month, after I showered, the generic style I got didn’t want to replicate itself again without the prodigious amount of products the hairdresser had piled on at the salon.

So I decided offhandedly that I wanted to go back to short hair. I really did feel different when I had short hair. Like it was a way of being true to myself, to the way I saw myself inside, within my spirit.

But this time, after I got it cut, I didn’t feel too different as I stared at myself in the mirror, waiting for my sister’s hair to be done as well. I do feel a little more satisfied with my hair (no more bangs in my eyes and excessive amount of hair left everywhere I go!), and that short hair suits me better and expresses my inner self more– but I don’t feel like I’ve changed that much.

I don’t feel like just because I look different physically, my internal feelings will change, too. Not anymore.

That’s my milestone. How I look on the outside doesn’t affect my inside anymore.

And it’s not just hair. But my body– my nose, my lips, my eyes, my legs, my arms, my hips, my stomach, or how well I fit my bras.

As long as I’m healthy, as long as I’m happy… on the inside.

And that realization, cemented in my heart, brings me more happiness than any physical change ever could.

(I can’t wait to shave my head in a couple years, too. Originally it was scheduled for my 30th birthday, but I figure why not sooner than later?)

Thank you India.Arie for the title… I was stumped for a moment

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