One thing I’m finally leaving behind in 2017 is the delusion that I can earn someone’s love by serving them.
(via uglysex)
I really want to work on growing as a person and making my life better. Sometimes it feels like I haven’t changed at all and I’m stuck like I’ve always been, but then I look back and realize I’ve grown a lot. There are still a lot of things I want to change about myself. I had a vision of myself in the future, the same miserable person who has just accepted being that way. And I realized if I don’t change these things that’s what I’ll be. Although they have come to my attention mostly because other people have pointed them out to me, I think if I work on these things I will have a better life and future even if I’m alone.
1. Negativity. I don’t know what causes me to be so negative, not just about myself but other people and life in general. I’ve just convinced myself that life is always going to be hard and I’m always going to be depressed because that feels like part of my personality. It’s only been in the last year that I’ve thought of a future for myself, with a career and a family. It always felt like those things weren’t possible for me. I know that they’re possible if I work for them. I want to stop being so hard on myself. I’ve always been insecure about the way I look, but it wasn’t until I grew up that I started to hate my personality too. I criticize everything I say and do, and it makes me anxious about interacting with other people. I just don’t want to hate myself anymore. I want to change the things that need to be changed, and accept the rest.
2. Laziness. I am the laziest person I know. I put everything off until the last minute, and then I basically have a meltdown because I’m stressed about it. Obviously this is not a productive way of living. I want to be the best at everything I do, and I can’t be the best if I’m barely scraping by. I want to be a hard worker so that I can feel proud of myself. I think I have made a little progress in this area in the last few years but I still do the bare minimum when I should be trying my best.
3. Playing the victim. Someone pointed out to me that I love to play the victim and ever since they said that I notice every time I do it. I guess it kind of goes along with how I’m content being miserable. It’s like I relish in any chance to make my life worse which is… pretty fucked up. I’ve been struggling with this lately though because part of me is like ya know, that person did something wrong to me and I should be upset about it. And then the other part of me is like, is this really worth being upset over? Am I just trying to get sympathy or attention? And so I’m also working on caring less about what people think about me, which is really hard because I feel like I built a lot of relationships around hiding from people and keeping secrets just because I don’t want them to judge me. So now when someone says something that upsets me I just try to process it more before jumping straight to crying and begging for an apology. I always say that I never get mad, I just get sad. I think I should get mad more often.
4. Being anti-social. This is such a hard thing for me. I’ve pretty much isolated myself to the point that I don’t have any friends. And most of the time I hate myself for it, but today I was thinking that it’s better to be alone and work on myself then reach out to people just because I’m lonely or I feel like I should have friends. I know that true friendship is a great thing to have, but it is really really difficult for me to open myself up to it. It’s not like I don’t meet people, I guess I just don’t try to be their friend. It’s especially hard when I talk to someone for 5 minutes and spend the rest of the day analyzing what I said. I’m still coming to terms with my best friend since high school removing herself from my life. I’ve always bottled everything up and hid things but that’s not how healthy relationships work. That’s how our relationship was and I think it’s for the best that it’s over. I know it’s my fault and I’m not a good friend, as she made clear, and these things are holding me back even more. I’m not sure how I plan to change this yet but I think I need to forgive myself and be more open to people.
I don’t expect any of these things to change right away or even this year but I plan on getting better at them over time and I’m proud of myself for being reflective and putting thought into how to improve myself and my life.

Charles L'Eplattenier (Swiss, 1874-1946), Bassin de Doubs, 1933. Oil on hessian, 97.5 x 130.5 cm.
(via whitelines)