What if we wrote a letter to ourselves knowing the condition we are in,
the way we would write it for someone else in the same position?
We could write of our acceptance of ourselves the way we would for those we love. Think of how it is difficult for us to say “I love me, what I’m doing is amazing, I look nice today, I’m doing so well.” We can effortlessly write such things to someone we care for, understanding things from their point of view and taking into consideration various aspects, but maybe we cannot do so for ourselves. We are all just floating beans trying to make sense of this world, but we continuously use the opinions of others online and those with little understanding of our brains to decide our value and beauty, giving them the power to drive our emotions.
We are positioning the intricate, eccentric, individual parts of ourselves as only worthy of a number – a sterile representation of our “self-worth.” It becomes an obsession, an infatuation with a beauty that is unworthy of being labelled as our true selves, amongst the need for the acceptance and validation of internet people, who rarely touch our soul or heart but can harm our self-perception and mind. I think the only way to stop the obsession is to see it for what is is – fluff. It’s a made up world we have in our brains, where the opinions living in the minds of others, or our lives through a screen are given more attentiveness than the ones we are living.
Whenever I see myself being drawn into this world I stop and think of the fluffiness of it all and the specialness of actual existence, one of which I could never take for granted – surviving cancer ensured me of that.
