Posting this so I can remember I had this thought.

Been feeling like human garbage again. If I’m being honest, all I can see is someone who is ugly, boring and annoying. All I want is for someone to comfort me, to hype me up. I want someone I’m attracted to, to tell me that I’m beautiful, hot even. I want them to tell me I’m interesting and a delight to converse with.

And here comes the reason I’m posting this: it doesn’t matter if someone else says it, if I don’t learn to see myself that way, I’ll never believe it. Every person I find attractive could say those things to me and right now I’d call them all liars. I do not believe I’m beautiful or interesting or delightful.

I can look back over my life and see the instances when people I trusted, loved and looked to for validation betrayed that trust and love. I can easily pinpoint when they callously and, at times, cruelly tore me down. To what end? I don’t know.

Now, all those people are gone from my life but the damage they did is still there. This isn’t some unique experience I’m describing. This is just how humans work. But this is how I sort myself out. Writing.

I don’t know if I’ll ever feel beautiful or interesting or whatever. But I do know that no external validation will ever be enough. Yes, external invalidation is what fucked me up in the first place. But getting someone else to validate me would just be letting them fight my battles for me and that won’t ever work. No one can be with me 24/7 to keep these demons at bay. And wouldn’t that be an exhausting job for anyone? Constantly, having to boost someone else’s mental health.

Here’s the fucked up thing, as I was typing that last bit, I realized that I’ve been that person for others. I’ve been the one constantly boosting someone else’s mental health to the detriment of my own. And, yes, it’s exhausting. I don’t want to put anyone else through what I’ve been through.

I get that it’s ok and even good to reach out to people when you’re not doing well mentally. And I’m not saying I don’t because I do. I have people I trust and reach out to often. I just know that when it comes to this issue, there is no one in the world that can help. As badly as I want external validation, it’s not gonna help me.

So, once again, I’m here. Writing about my private (very ordinary) pain, publicly. My sincere hope is that I’ll think about the fact that I posted this every time I start to feel bad about myself. When I’m hoping and wishing for that external validation that isn’t going to come, I hope, instead, I’ll remember that I posted this.

I don’t know how to make myself feel all those wonderful things about myself. But I do know that I’m not gonna get it from someone else. And that’s what I want to remember. I have to be brave enough and strong enough to fight my own demons.