Skip to main content

Half-page

 

Leviton 3 Quang Ho

I'd come a long way in terms of learning to accept myself. I was subjected to a constant stream of hurtful words from others that I believed I deserve, words that I repeatedly pierced myself with. It was a journey in which I wanted to befriend myself while also becoming my worst enemy. A part of me despises myself, but there's a voice in my head that says it's understandable why I was that way, even if my negativity was often louder than my bravery. It was a journey of magnifying everything I didn't like about myself in the hopes of experiencing the tendency of acceptance. They said that you can't accept something if you can't see its flaws. But it usually pushed me even further.

It was an on-and-off healing process. I thought I'd make it one day, but the next day I was back to square one. It was standing up and stumbling around once more. I was easily triggered and did not recover quickly. In order for the stabs to stop penetrating me, I had learned to be tough. When I feel like someone is trying to turn me back into a needy, dependent person who knows nothing but to self-sabotage and wait for others to validate my worth, I become cruel and cold.

It's the reason some perceive me as cruel–my towering, impenetrable boundaries. My truths aren't always laid bare, and the pages of my life aren't always filled to the brim. It took me a substantial amount of time to develop self-love to a point where I couldn't risk relying on others to validate my worth. This is why I often seem to withdraw, maintain a considerable distance, and remain cautious. I never thought my body could be anything but a canvas of bruises, my own locked door, my haunted house. The process of unlearning these ingrained patterns is proving to be an arduous and lengthy endeavor.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The skin doesn't fit and never did

Hands by  He Lihuai It happened in the middle of something painfully ordinary—folding laundry. I was standing there, pairing socks, half-distracted like usual, when I suddenly just stopped. My eyes landed on my hands, hands I’ve seen a million times before and out of nowhere, this thought bloomed: these hands won’t always be mine. It shook me a little. Not in a dramatic, existential crisis kind of way. More like a wave lapping at the edges of my awareness. It was the kind of truth that doesn't shout. It hums. And it stayed with me. The older I get, the more moments like that seem to happen. Little flashes that remind me that our bodies aren’t really ours forever. We act like they are, like we can shape them, preserve them, make them last. But they’re not permanent. They're on loan. We’re visitors in our own skin, passing through. I’m reminded of this beautiful passage in Toni Morrison’s Beloved , when Baby Suggs, holy, stands before her community, not to preach doctrine, but t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hope sounds like the first birdsong at dawn after a long night

  Taste of Cherry (1997) Hope isn’t always loud. It doesn’t always arrive with fireworks or sweeping declarations. More often, it lives quietly in the pause between falling apart and beginning again. It lingers in the small signs that life, somehow, goes on. Sometimes, it sounds like the first bird singing at the edge of morning after a sleepless night. A soft, steady reminder that darkness isn’t permanent. There’s a moment before sunrise when the world feels stuck, like the night might stretch on forever. The sky holds a deep blue stillness, and shadows spill into every corner. It’s easy then to believe that nothing will change. But then, from somewhere unseen, a single bird begins to sing. Not loudly, but with purpose. That melody doesn’t erase the night. It just offers something to hold on to. That’s what hope is. Small. Persistent. Real. It’s like that breath you take before doing something that scares you: that single moment where fear meets the chance to be brave. Hope doesn’...
Post a Comment
Read more

What the Stars Never Said

  Twilight by Sergey A. Tutunov I used to hate the stars. Every time I failed, I’d look up and talk to them as if they were listening. But they never answered. They just blinked, and I took that as their silent agreement that I was a failure, that I deserved everything going wrong. I tried learning their names. Orion, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, but I always got them wrong too. Eventually, I stopped looking. But one evening, as the sky shifted from dusk to dark, I found myself glancing up again. I didn’t name them this time. I just whispered a quiet plea, hoping maybe, just maybe, they’d say something different. "Tell me I deserve all of this," I whispered. The stars blinked, brighter this time and for a moment, I fixated on how much they shimmered, how often they pulsed. It was as if they were trying to say something, not mock me, but answer me. And then the wind moved. Soft, steady, and I paused. Had they always been this beautiful? Maybe I had been too consumed by my own failur...
Post a Comment
Read more