Shrek Taught Me To Love Myself, Good One Shrek!

It may surprise you to know that I think about things outside of my current living situation, but I do. Shocking, I know! I can hear all of you gasping as you Macaulay Culkin your faces and wonder, WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO THINK ABOUT?! But every once in a while I have something genius to say outside of room mates, TV shows, and my ever growing awesomeness. Today, it's about how ever growingly awesome we ALL are. And no, that's NOT the same thing as me being awesome because ME is a unit in WE so there!

I was in bed trying to sleep last night when this thought came to me that really shouldn't have seemed as brilliant as it did. I thought to myself, The more time you spend worrying about what others think of you, the less time you have available to devote to worrying about what YOU think of you.  Well sleepy me was right, and she was looking extra beautiful and intelligent. See I've worked really hard to get to a point in my life where worrying about others isn't as much of an issue. If a stranger thinks I look bad, or do something stupid, it doesn't matter. Furthermore, If a friend thinks something negative for the most part I'm good with it. I've come to a point in my life where I don't worry about others opinions of me, and it's liberating.

Here's what I have to say to you. At the end of it all you have to be able to live with who you are and who you become. You and no one else! And not to go all "Ogre's are like onions" on you all, but it's true. We have layers, even us non-ogre types (though I can be an ogre in the morning). So what's the point in defining yourself over that top layer, fourth layer, or whichever layer you are currently worried about? If there's a layer that's been bothering you then you can work on it, but remember you got all those other awesome layers that are doing just fine! Your "problem" layers shouldn't define  you when all those other layers make you up as well. And if you're the one putting all the work into yourself and your problem layers, why should you care if a friend or random stranger thinks you aren't good enough? Can you even see all those great layers you got, or have you convinced yourself they don't exist? I think the secret we've been keeping from ourselves is that we ARE good enough. We can grown and change with time but at the end of the day we are good enough and we are awesome little onions... or ogres... or parfaits.

Another little secret we've been keeping from ourselves is that more often than not, people aren't really judging us. We are judging ourselves, while everyone else is too busy judging themselves to worry if we suck or not. 

People don't really tell us that we are good enough very often do they. I mean in a world like ours that is so keen on all the children getting trophies just for coming out and picking their noses on the bench, why aren't we so keen on reminding ourselves we're good enough? Is it that they're adorable little kids, and we are prone to protecting and nurturing their young bright needs? Is it that we think children's self esteem is important but adult self-esteem is silly? Have we simply abandoned ourselves in an attempt to save the young. Even airlines will tell you to put your mask on before assisting the child next to you, because if you can't breath how can you expect to help him swim ashore? When you feel good about yourself, you are more equipped to help the children in your life feel good about themselves. Model your self love, and they will follow in your foot steps. I'm fairly certain my genius runs out when it comes to understanding why we don't show the love for ourselves that we deserve. I simply don't get it at this point in my life. But here's what I do get: 

• I get that it's possible for us to improve and grow, and I get that it's important for us all to remember that growth and change can be beautiful valuable things. 
• I get that we are surrounding ourselves with criticism and negativity that stifles our knowledge of how awesome we already are. 
• I get that as a society we aren't even talking about how our weaknesses can be strengths. 
• I get that these are things our awesome society can improve upon. These are things I would say are our societies weaknesses as well as strengths.
  

If you are a sheep, you go ahead and really rock that sheep thing. Put on them hooves and sheep away! I'm completely serious despite my way of expressing myself. Sheep can be super useful. I wouldn't doubt it if at least once in human history someone has said, "Wow, I'm really thankful I had these sheep here. I wouldn't have been able to replenish the clothes I lost in that massive clothes fire otherwise! And wasn't it cool when the herd of sheep carried me out of the fire on their woolly little backs? Super awesome! Thanks sheep! I owe you my life!" ( or some other variation of that sentiment).

Now I struggle occasionally. I have moments where I have to put things on perspective to realize that I really like myself and it doesn't matter if someone I've met knows how cool I am. I have to remind myself that my awesome undiscovered crazy looking yellow spirit animal can be both my biggest strength as well as biggest weakness depending on how I choose to use it, and how I choose to learn from when I misuse it. But most of all I have to remind myself that I'm good enough as the crazy looking yellow undiscovered animal that I am.

Whether I'm struggling with my intelligence layer, or my physical appearance layer, or my talent layer, I approach it all the same way. I ATTACK my thoughts while my thoughts are attacking me. If I think something negative about my appearance, I counter it with a positive thought about my appearance. Then, I write it down and I put it up where I can see it every day, It serves to remind me that I've got awesome qualities. Awesome qualities that make me feel really good about myself no matter how down I am feeling.

I work hard, and I've overcome some impressive hurdles of my own. I manage to follow the code I've made for myself and I'm proud of who I am and what I do. One day I won't even have to work at it, I'll be so good at loving who I am that it won't take effort or reminders. I won't have to put up post-its that say "Nice thights!" or "Dat brain doe!" on my walls. It will be automatic, and it will be as beautiful as I am inside and out. That's my goal.

A tribute to my spirit animal.

Groundhog Day and the Kitchen Cry Fest of 2013

Day one of move in weekend last Fall I walked out of my room to take a leak and found four weeping adult women on the kitchen floor comparing childhood traumas. It's been like the movie Groundhog Day ever since. I imagine it wasn't very funny for Phil Connors as he experienced it in the moment either.  

You know Groundhog Day, right? Where Bill Murry plays a weather man living the same day over and over. He does everything he can to stop living February 2nd over and over, including kidnapping the ever fluffy and charming Punxsutawney Phil. Yeah, well I've been living a way less pretty and cinematic version of Groundhog Day since that moment I realized my room mates would never stop crying on the kitchen floor.

Anyway, the good thing about living with crazy people is that you get way more interesting stories out of it than when you live with sane and pleasant people. You learn and grow from it and gain all these valuable life lessons, which I will impart on this blog occasionally if I remember to. I can be scatter brained. You may rest assured knowing that you will definitely hear about the stories. If I could sing them to you I would, because I  have a beautiful singing voice the likes of which every Disney princess would hate me more than my room mates do out of pure and utter jealousy. And I could be over-exaggerating. After all it wouldn't be the first time my confidence level combined with my powerful imagination has lead me to believe I'm more extraodinary than I actually am.

Back to day one. I had to take a leak and I still hadn't emptied all of my boxes in my room, but I was making progress. I opened my door and before I could get down the hall to the toilet I was confronted with a very uncomfortable situation. Mind you, not one of us actually knew each other yet. We had exchanged very superficial text messages saying things like:

Room mate A: "I like pugs, do you like pugs?"
Me: "I have no opinion on the pug issue, but thats nice"

So there was no background between any of us to really justify having four women ugly crying on the kitchen floor in pools of mascara and snot. And when I say ugly crying I'm not calling names, I'm just saying this wasn't some glamourus movie version of female emotion where the nose gets a little red and a single tear flows down the acne free cheek. This was full on, I-just-watched-an-episode-of-greys-anatomy-and-I-can't-deal crying where you spoon feed yourself and cling to your comfort object as your face gets smushy and voilent red and you don't know which liquids are which and you realize YOU DON'T RECOGNIZE YOURSELF ANYMORE!

I get that sometimes we just gotta cry it out. Crying isn't a weakness, it's a skill really. It just seemed a little inappropriate amongst a group of strangers in a dorm while they compared really terrible, inconvienient personal histories like a dick measuring contest of emotion and turmoil. Here's a rough outline of how that night went.

Room mate A: "I was adopted"
Room mate B: "I'm deaf" 
Room mate C: "I'm blind" 
Room mate D: "I have trust issues" 
Room mate A: "I hate myself" 

The contest went on... for hours. And I just sat on the toilet devising a plan to sneak past them. This was pretty stupid of me. I mean a really dumb plan, because my room lies just across from the kitchen (not even a yard stick away) where they had morphed into a single human entity of sadness and bodily goo. By the time I realized just how naive my plan was it was too late. I reached my door to unlock it and retreat just as the four weeping heads turned to me for support and validation. I kid you not, it happened in slow motion and everything. 

I am really not that emotionally constipated, but my instinct was to pretend it wasn't happening and lock myself in my room while they judged me for my lack of participation in what I like to call the "Kitchen Cry Fest of 2013." I acknowledge it sounds very paranoid to imagine they were judging me or thinking of me at all while reliving all of thier former traumas and misgivings. Unfortunately, I'm not paranoid. Not even a month into living with them I had to have a come to jesus meeting over Room mate A's hurt feelings over my lack of emotional communication with her. She mentioned Kitchen Cry Fest 2013 specifically as an example of how she felt distanced from me. This then morphed into a group mentality supported by emotional validation with the ring leader being none other than Room mate A. 

The herd has found itself many targets since the beginning of last semester, some of which were members of the herd itself. Thier first target was me. Apparently a common mix up in bathroom cleaning schedules makes you good fodder for the herd. But that's a completely other story in its own.

Day one of movie in weekend will forever be the Groundhog Day of the 2013-2014 school year. I have yet to steal a rodent in any of my plans to end this time loop, does that mean I'm not trying hard enough? I don't believe so, but maybe Phil Connors would have a differing opinion on that. More importantly than the Groundhog Day bit, day one of move in weekend will forever be the day that I started learning how to choose room mates that were NOT the room mates that I chose. Not to get all "Anarchy! Fight the norm! Listen to The Used!" on anyone, but I am not a sheep. I am some kind of undiscovered crazy looking awesome animal that is probably yellow, and probably does weird shit all on its own without the influence of other yellow, crazy looking, awesome animals telling it that it should. This blogger is making better choices in room mates for next year and finding at least a few fellow undiscovered animals to live with. Even if the rest kind of suck, having SOMEONE that doesn't want to cry on the kitchen floor will be a plus.