Past me surprises me often.

As I impart onto Love, You warriors, “little acorns lead to mighty oaks.” The Mighty Oak within us is already there, we just haven’t rediscovered that part of ourselves yet.

I write this because when I look back, I can see that I kind of always knew what the answer to my various self-imposed issues was– I just didn’t know how to truly embody it.

my mind and thoughts; endless realizations
2007 November 20 (before I began to recover in earnest, and when I was still in the depths of self-destructive hell)

in the end, it took so many years to figure it out, find the obvious answer, right in front of me:
“love yourself.”

Even this, one of the very first posts published here on cynosure, surprised me today as I reread it. I’m still learning the lessons herein, and I keep on having to forget and remember the very things I told myself two years ago:

we all survive. we all heal.
2009 December 3

winter, maybe.

do you ever feel like you don’t know why you’re alive? sometimes that it wouldn’t matter if you were dead or not. a second ago you had passion for everything in existence, but now the flickers have whistled away. apathy is worse than sadness, in my opinion. anesthesia is the real depression, indifference the true disease. wishing you can’t feel pain doesn’t make pain go away, it just makes you numb to all– happiness and joy included.

when I experience a moment like this, sometimes the first thing I think is: I was supposed to be over all of this by now. I was supposed to have “healed” from whatever wispy grey of fog (or pollution?) clouded my heart once upon a time. I’m “supposed” to be happy. but that’s what I forget, that none of us really “should” be anything but ourselves. that the only thing we “should” do is let ourselves be.

(Read more.)

And this, from three years ago, right before I even started learning to love myself for real:

You know what?
2009 February 10

Life is hard. Life is so, so hard sometimes.

You can be on the edge of dying. Not dying physically, necessarily, but in spirit. You could be simply losing your will to live. Your will to stay alive one more second. Your will to wake up. And be conscious when the world keeps on going, when time passes.

Life can be so hard it tears you apart. It makes you fall apart. It rips you up.

But that’s why you keep putting one foot in front of each other. That’s why you learn to get up, even when both your legs are broken or missing or gone and you just. don’t. want. to. go. any. further.

It’s okay to want to give up. And it’s okay to feel like giving up. It’s okay to realize that, whatever you’re doing at this moment that’s making you feel such despair, maybe it’s just not what you need right now. And it’s okay to admit that.

Whatever you feel.. whether it be weak, or simply too tired… it’s okay.

But you ARE enough. And you will ALWAYS be enough. And even if you feel disappointed in yourself.. it’s past. Right now is right now. You can recreate your life starting this very moment.

(Read more.)

I share with you these because when I wrote the first and third pieces, I was, honestly, kind of a mess.

Yet, somehow, even in those darkest times, I found some light within me– the light that’s within all of us– and kept moving forward, holding onto that slightest flickering flame. It honestly shocks me sometimes to see that I could have, out of seemingly nowhere, pulled out just enough hope and wisdom to keep me going.

But maybe it wasn’t just me, at least me in that very moment– the me in 2007 who was struggling with an eating disorder, having just ended her poor excuse for a relationship and gotten her heart broken by the same guy who broke it three years before– or the me in 2009 who was living alone and found herself dreadfully, dreadfully lonely and depressed. Maybe it was future me– maybe even me here, now, or even further beyond, a me that I don’t even know yet– whispering hope into my own heart years ago.

The thing is, we never know for sure where exactly we’re heading. No matter how much we don’t even feel like being alive today, with every step we take, we go forward, not back. We’re always learning, we’re always growing, and we’re always waking up more and more every day to the magnificence that’s already within us.

We can’t see where we’re going until we get there. We might know the journey we want to take, the forks in the road we prefer over the others. We might know where we really do want to go. But we don’t know what it’ll be like until we actually arrive where we’re meant to be.

I’m going to quote the uber-talented Utada Hikaru here in a blatant reveal of my not-so-publicized videogame nerdery:

Regardless of warnings
the future doesn’t scare me at all
Nothing’s like before.

No matter what we’ve put behind us, no matter what we’re even traveling through now, the future won’t be anything like yesterday or today.

We can always choose, in each moment, to create for ourselves something different.

Eight years ago, I couldn’t have even dreamt of the peace and joy that I live with now.

Eight years ago today, I was contemplating suicide and harming myself, forming the thin, faint white scar on my right wrist– and other scars that have long since faded.

Eight years ago, I couldn’t have known that one day I would learn to be grateful for the depression, the abuse, the heartbreak, the sorrow and self-destruction, somehow.

Eight years ago, I couldn’t have imagined that one day, I would be making my life’s work reminding others that our lives are always worth living, no matter how it feels otherwise.

I never saw this reality until I got here. The only thing I could do was take tiny little steps, every day. In 2004, the steps I took– the only steps I could take– were simply to refrain from hurting myself and keep on staying alive.

Today, I’m still taking steps. Steps to soften, to open, to be kinder and more understanding. To let go. To empathize deeper.

We can’t see where we’re going.

But where we are right now is where we’re meant to be, and no matter what our situation the best thing we can do is find some semblance of hope, of gratitude, of acceptance. Of love.

We can’t see where we’re going, so we might as well enjoy what we can see: where we are, right now.

(And trust me on this… it only gets better from here.)

Reviews for The Thing About Thin:

“…Sui Solitaire (of everything I’ve ever loved ever… I don’t think Sui’s courses and e-books have been out of my inbox since she started ‘em) has released The Thing about Thin. I’ll give you the short version and say:

It’s brilliant. It burns with a raw honesty. It inspires with a burning passion. It is, to quote the author, fucking liberating.

And it is about more than eating disorders.

…Parts of it were so perfectly spot-on for me, it felt as though she had read my mind (I haven’t ruled this out) and written out how I felt in ways I couldn’t express yet… This book makes heavy the point that it is a journey, and one which we learn through. Parts of the journey we repeat, and that’s okay.

If you’re still reading this review, that’s okay too, but I find it difficult to believe that you haven’t skipped on over there and laid down some cold hard e-cash for this amazing book.”

♥ Amelia J. Wells, SilenceCupcake.info (read the rest of the review here)

Liberate yourself. Start your revolution.

read more:

1. promise yourself to be strong
2. we all survive. we all heal.
3. the time to love your body is now. not tomorrow, not tuesday. now.