thokokadewere - Tumblr blog

[thokokadewere]

“There are two reasons why we don’t trust people. First - we don’t know them. Second - we know them.”

— Unknown

[thokokadewere]

They all talk about loving yourself and choosing yourself...But no one ever talks about how sinful it can feel. How wrong it can feel. How heavy it can feel. And how isolating it is. No one tells you how lonely it gets...

And it's both sobering and sad that the very act of choosing yourself will make everyone you've ever chosen walk away from you with a disdain so powerful you'd think love was a sin worth being banished for.

I can't help but think, "Why does loving myself offend you so much, when all I've ever done is love you? Do I not deserve my love as much as you did? Am I not worth my own gifts and the pleasures I afford others?"

[thokokadewere]

Thank you @darknesswithinourheartsxxx and everyone who got me to 25 reblogs!

[thokokadewere]

It's crazy, isn't it?

How I look in the mirror and hate what I see

Then look out into the world

And wish that someone would love everything they see when they look at me

- First, Love Yourself

[thokokadewere]

I let go of a person the other day

He was so full of life, fun to speak with, lighthearted

And he was also very mature and kind and intuitive

But I could feel that he wasn't for me..and one incident - a really silly one - thrust that reality in my face

I had to let him go..and I did

And for the first time in 26 years, it's really starting to dawn on me, that people do come and go

That they are experiences, all of them

So alive and exhilarating and fun to be around..and then they're not

And they go

And another one comes

And life goes on like that

It. Goes. On.

It's clicking

No one's mine to keep. Ever. Even when they stay.

They're an experience.

And I only want the good ones

The ones that make the experience of life positively memorable

[thokokadewere]

You want the convenience of having me around but don't want to do the work of keeping me around...

And life has taught me that there is no love or happiness to be had where someone doesn't care about filling the cup they so often empty for their own satisfaction.

[thokokadewere]

"Our fear may not go away, but it will not stand in the way."

- Bell Hooks

[thokokadewere]

I don't negotiate the standard of care that I desire in my connections. When I set a standard, it is usually tied to an intrinsic part of my own wellbeing. So when I say I want someone who communicates, it's because someone who doesn't prioritize communication will trigger my anxiety. When I say I want someone who is emotionally mature, it is because a lack of that will impede my ability to express myself around them. My standards are tied to the security I feel within any given connection, and a negotiation of that is a request to violate my own comfort.

[thokokadewere]

Are you fighting for someone who loves you, or fighting for someone to love you?

[thokokadewere]

I remember someone not showing up for me on a day I explicitly said was important to me. They said "they didn't care much for it." That "they didn't grow up celebrating special days and didn't see why they had to now".

I think about that a lot. I think about how you can love someone and not care for what they care for, or show up when it matters to them.

I think about how so much of what has been others' love for me has been for their own convenience. More "I'll show up if it makes ME happy, not because it makes YOU happy". I think I wasn't loved at all.

I imagine days where I will experience a reciprocated radical expansion of self in service to another, and I swoon, excited for the love I know I deserve.

[thokokadewere]

The words "You can't love another until you learn to love yourself" are only starting to make sense to me now after spending so much time by myself. It makes sense how my attempts at loving others were often wrapped in fear, control and manipulation masked as love. It's absurd to think I was so sure I was loving others when I didn't even know what it meant to love myself, or to love at all. Love, as a doing word, as a word to embodied...

I am sorry for the hearts I broke attempting to make myself feel whole and useful. I am sorry to myself for not knowing how to love, because I was never loved.

I am sorry, dear God, I never knew you, never embodied you, never shone your light to others, because of the darkness that I had grown so accustomed to it dimmed all my attempts of illuminating the hearts of those you sent down my path. I am sorry for never being love.

[thokokadewere]

I used to hate when I cry about things that happened in my past. I would think "This happened ages ago! Why is it still causing me pain now?!" But I'm learning to embrace the pain and the tears that so often accompany it. I now think of it as my body giving me the opportunity to grieve an injustice that I'd gone through but hadn't quite registered as an injustice, thus robbing me of an appropriate reaction. I embrace the anger, rage, sadness, pain and tears, because I know now that I should've reacted that way, but didn't have the capacity to, so I didn't. It is the gift of a legitimate reaction for a mind that's stuck in a moment or time long lost, but never forgotten or let go. It is healing.

[thokokadewere]

I get angry sometimes. But most times I'm sad. I keep thinking "I didn't deserve that. I didn't deserve that at all." And it hurts because, even with a crippled self-esteem and a self-worth so tattered, every broken fibre of my being still knows that I didn't deserve that at all. And that makes me so sad for myself, because it feels like, even when I lead with love and goodness, I'll never be seen or heard. It feels like I'll never be loved back. It shrivels up my soul and makes me want to become as invisible as I feel.

[thokokadewere]

I want to live but life keeps getting in the way...

[thokokadewere]

“I wasn’t sorry I existed any more. I deserved to live. I deserved to find love. I knew now―I believed, now―that I deserved to be loved.”

— Meredith Russo, If I Was Your Girl

[thokokadewere]

Him: You're so needy!

Me: ...because I have needs. There isn't a living thing in this world that does not have needs, and it's quite odd that you want to shame me for being human.

[thokokadewere]

"Know that when you stay with your weapons raised you remind the Universe that it is war you're asking for."

-Brooklyn Goddess Kay