Find a life of your own.

I woke up this morning with the words "less is broken" resounding in my mind. And I know this sounds crazy (especially since the phrase sounds grammatically wrong at first), but it felt strangely like a calling, as if I have to get these words and my thoughts out somehow and to do this on my blog just felt right. So here I am.

You probably already heard the phrase "less is more". I think this phrase exists in a lot of languages,at least it also does in German.

Wear less make-up. Laugh less. Talk less. Be less excitable. Show less interest. Basically be less like yourself.

And then whatever people you might want to appeal to will notice you, will like you.

What a flawed logic.

We pretend like "less" is a part of our well-meant advice, that it would help others out. We pretend it's an expression of our kindness towards others. Our empathy, maybe even. Maybe we once discovered if we handled things a certain way, others would like us more. Or maybe it is a trait that was already our own, that made our life more easier. And now we want to pass this so-called "knowledge" along to others.

Fuck that.

What we're essentially telling others when we give them the advise to be "less" is to be someone else then themselves. To change their passions, their likes and dislikes to please others. The term "less" is broken. We have used in all the wrong ways.

Why don't we tell people to express themselves however they want to? Why don't we say "be more of yourself, so much that you overflow with beauty and light"? Perhaps it's our wish that others are not as good as others.

We live in such a take-down culture. And I'm sick of it.

Be whoever you are. Don't try to please other people by changing your very being. If you feel like you have to, they aren't the right people after all. Love whatever you want to love, be passionate about whatever you are passionate about and don't ever try to dull any of it.

The right people will see your personality, and they will love you still. Maybe it's something I still have to ingrain into my mind and my heart and my body but I'll keep trying. Because I know it's worth getting there.

What's better than being able to let yourself be free?

Find a life of your own.

xxx Sarah

ps: If you get told you have to change for the appeal of the opposite or the same gender, fuck that. You will never find happiness in a relationship this way. Be you, and you will find someone who's so excruciatingly themselves too, and you will be yourselves and be HAPPY together. I pinky promise.

A couple of days ago, I finished reading "Being Miss Nobody" by Tamsin Winter which is basically about an eleven-year-old girl who suffers from Selected Muteness, meaning in most situations she just cannot speak. Because of her illness, she faces a lot of difficulties especially at school and you kind of follow her journey through all of it. When I finished the book, one quote really stuck with me: "There's a time for being quiet, and there's a time for speaking up.". And I thought about it a lot, how I'm often afraid to voice my opinion and I thought "But why though? It's not as if I'm afraid people will judge me for who I am, at least mostly not anymore."

Then a situation of last week came into my mind. In our German lesson, we had to work in groups and the ones who are already quite good at essay writing (to which I somehow belong too) should team up with people who got more difficulties. So I got together with some friends of mine and we worked on interpreting a scene of a drama when one of them said "Sarah, I wish we could swap brains, I would never find that interpretation in the text!". And in my head I immediately went like "ohh you don't wanna live in my brain, it's a terrible, terrible place" but instead I wanted to express that I totally would in order to help her if I could but when I opened my mouth it sounded completely wrong, as if I'm arrogant and thinking I'm smarter than everyone anyways (which wasn't what I meant to say at all!). After that, I thought "wow, why do I even speak to others, it would be best to just Keep Quiet forever.

You see, the problem is always this (enjoy my crappy paintings I did on my laptop):



The thing is, when I'm thinking about what to say, I immediately connect it with feelings at the same time. Like I'll get a grasp of a thought and right away I'm like "okay this is supposed to express my sympathy (for example)" and then when the sounds come out of my mouth, I either stumble over words or misplace the order in such a way that my intended meaning is lost. Yes, always thinking in English and having to translate everything to German is also contributing to this problem, but I think it's rather a personality-wise problem.

How can I let people know what I actually mean? I don't know. Maybe by trying to show them through actions who I am. "Actions speak louder than words", most people say. But will they still be around to see my actions if they are already deterred by my words?

If I ever find an answer to that question, I will let you know. Until then, I hope you'll still be able to find a life of your own somehow.

xxx Sarah

As you might now, I was having some hard days scattered through the past few weeks. And as I mentioned in my last post on here, I kinda got into thinking about pain and wounds (also like I'm constantly trying to solve the mystery that is oneself and why I react to certain things the way I react).

And I was also thinking about how people like to judge other problems. If you ever told someone about your bad day you might've heard "Oh but others have it worse!" or "Chin up, there are worse things than that." and it just frustrates you since you feel like your problem is really important to you and it takes so much space up in your life but there they are, dismissing your sadness by comparing it to other people's. And I think whenever we do this, we do an injustice to others. As Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower put it:

“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.”

So only yesterday my best friend was at my house and we played some cards and suddenly got into talking about pain (due to a personal issue of my best friend) and the fact that she's currently avoiding the pain and putting it in a really far away corner of her brain with the result that she nearly forgot telling me about it. I said that I tend to do that a lot with everything I face, pain and problems likewise, but that it always turns out that my feelings will hit me even harder if I don't face them head on, so I'm currently trying to change that.

And it got me into thinking about pain and healing and what the best way to deal with it is.

As I said avoiding it is a bad option; it just makes sure that you carry it with you for much longer, that it tucks on your sleeve daily, just like a ghost. And then it haunts you and haunts you for years to come and while time passes, it's even harder to let go of it (at least in my experience).

I think part of why we don't want to deal with wounds head-on is because of course we're afraid of the pain but I also think that it brings a sense of vulnerability with it as you still have to go outside and do stuff and others will probably notice and then think you're weak or overly sensitive.

Nevertheless, as much as we are afraid of opening up to others and letting them see our hurt and our weakness, I think it  is important to talk about it. Yes, this may sound cliche and it also bringsa lot of fears and risks with it but here's what I've found: Part of the reason why I'm clean today (besides Taylor) is that I opened up about my genuine feelings about this whole situation in 2014 to a friend. I let her in on this not so nice side about myself that would surely repel a whole lot of other people but it helped. It made the hurt feel less significant, as if it was bearable and also it was a huge relief to be able to just message someone whenever I had a bad day and they would understand me, they would understand a bit how my mind works and maybe help me find ways to calm it down again.

Apart from that, and maybe most importantly, healing takes time. Don't beat yourself up 'cause you had a few bad days when you just decided it would get better.

Think of it like a really wound. Imagine you have cut your finger badly and it is bleeding. You're putting a band-aid on it to let it heal but maybe from time to time the injury breaks up and there's blood all over your hand and it looks really ugly but you know you can still continue mending it with another band-aid. And just as time passes, the cut will heal, eventually. But you have to be patient with it.

It's the same with pain. You may have some days or weeks when everything is feeling terrible again but you're moving and I will promise you, you will heal. It's an unavoidable consequence.

And maybe at the end of it all, you'll find a life of your own.

xxx Sarah