An hour before this photo, I was crying.
The night before this photo, I was crying.
Whilst I’m never going to be a person who uploads a selfie of me post-crying, because it’s the last thing on my mind, I’ve always endeavoured to be real with you all.
When I’m going through a tough time, I say it.
When everything’s a little bit more difficult than normal, I’m honest in that.
So why was I crying?
Because I’ve let too many opinions invade my head.
Call me fat, call me ugly and I’m like “yeah, so? Ugly people live fulfilled lives all the time”.
Tell me that I’m a bad person and you’ve hit me straight in the heart.
I’m in a place with my body confidence where when someone states an opinion about my body, I can see it as just that, an opinion, not fact. But when someone thinks I’m a bad person or calls into question my character, I give them all my power and decide that their views must be those of the entire world. It spirals into thoughts that everyone hates me, when often when I look at the reality, it’s just one person.
So why did they think I’m a bad person? Because my book starts with a story about abuse. Something I never told anyone about until I was 21, a decade after it happened. And they didn’t think I was being fair to the person who inflicted the abuse, that I told the story of what happened.
Today I’m reminding myself that that is simply an opinion. I know I’ve done the right thing in telling my story because it’s so important we talk about these things. It’s my story, and I deserve to tell it. But they also deserve to have an opinion, even if that opinion still feels shit and taps into all the shame around that event. The shame that silenced me for 10 years.
So today, if you feel like the whole world hates you, remember that it’s not fact. It’s your mind that’s convinced you of that from generalising ONE opinion. Never let someone shame you into not telling your story.
In other news, I spent the day painting one of my old canvases, white. I thought it was a good activity to metaphorically and literally have a clean slate 😊🔥#ScarredNotScared