How to Hug Yourself.

This is going to be one of those cheesy little proses that you find everywhere—except you wont really find this everywhere, I guess. Anyway. I want to talk about internal hugs. This is an incredibly horrible thesis statement and my literature professor would probably want to verbally slap me across the face right now (because he’s a man and a physical slap is haram) and I would totally deserve it.

Anyway.

I believe in internal hugs. Which is silly. Considering the fact that I hate physical contact and that physical contact makes me feel awkward, because I am awkward and rigid by nature. For some reason. But, I am starting to fall for my internal core. The one that I thought had been eating me alive. It really wasn’t. It was actually doing the opposite. It was keeping me alive, and I was the cannibal. Turns out I was eating my own self. I was kind of, killing myself. And it was horrifying. It was so horrifying that it actually became a norm for me. Yes. Self-hatred had become a norm for me. I felt awkward complimenting myself; I felt weird telling myself that maybe I don’t look that bad; I felt awkward standing in a crowd. And I drowned myself in my own sea that I had fashioned for that sole purpose.

Everything was dark, and I wasn’t really lost—I was in my norm. I made myself believe that this all was completely fine and that this is okay, when it’s not. It’s not. Hurting yourself is not okay. Damaging your own self, is not okay—and how I wish I could go back in time, and just ask myself to stop. To stop hating my own flesh, to stop accepting that nagging pain that I had grown so used to, to just stop. Breathe. To not be afraid to just kind of maybe love myself, and that it’s okay to say that I’m beautiful, and wonderful, and smart, and capable, and that I can be stronger than the mountains and thicker than the roots of thousand year old trees.

I don’t want to be ashamed of myself. I don’t want to feel worthless, because God, trust me, it is the worst feeling in the world. I don’t want to feel unaccepted. I don’t want to feel less. I just don’t. I’m tired.

I choose to be happy. I choose to give myself one, big fat, internal bear hug. And you do too.