Sometimes when I zone out I think about the daunting fact that I’m turning 24 years old this August. This is absolute bananas to me because #1: 24 just sounds like deeper forehead wrinkles, a mailbox full of wedding save the dates, and even more malicious hangovers; but #2: because it seems like I was just celebrating my 21st birthday, completely unaware of how quickly my 20’s would soon be passing me by. As an almost 24 year-old I have to say that I always imagined to have it way more together at this age than where I am at the moment, lol, but I also believe that no matter what age we reach in this lifetime, there is always going to be something to learn. Right now for me, that something is the naïve tendencies of those who tend to look at things through ‘rose colored glasses’.
If you’ve never heard this saying please go ask your mom or google it or something because I don’t have time for you- but long-story short, a person who sees life through rose colored glasses is a person who sees things far better than they actually are. Aside from actually having quite a collection of various pairs of pink sunglasses (see cover photo lol), I’ve realized lately that for a long time, I must have a pair of rose colored contacts super glued to my retina’s or something because I have a tendency to give people way too much fucking credit sometimes.
I was talking to one of my friends the other day and she was strongly expressing (lol) how her last relationship was so fucking toxic it’s actually made her avoid any male species who have shown any signs of interest in a serious relationship for the past TWO years because of it. This conversation sparked a thought in my head about how many times I’ve personally settled in my lifetime. How many jobs I’ve stayed in, unhappy as hell, just because I felt like I owed somebody some sort of loyalty, how many half-ass friendships I continued to pour effort into just because I’ve known them for a certain amount of time, lived with them, etc. and do NOT even get me started on the relationships, situationships and everything in between where a boy treated me good when he felt like it, and horribly when he didn’t and I called it love.
I think there is something to be said about any point in your life where you feel like you are ripping apart pieces of yourself to give to something or somebody else just because you think it will make a person stay, or make a situation better. It’s when you give up your hobbies, your dreams of moving out of your hometown, your workout routine, your close girlfriends, or your family time all because you feel like the more parts of yourself you give away to the person you love the more effort this person is going to give you.
Stop fucking dropping your entire life for people; that isn’t loyalty, that’s breaking your own heart.
Let me just preface the rest of this post by saying that I am not shading, or even speaking of my past from a malicious or angry place so fucking relax, if we all never grew through what we’ve went through, we would all be wildly immature and probably stuck in mediocracy for the rest of our lives. If it wasn’t for the crappy jobs, shitty friends, or half-assed relationships I’ve experienced, I would have probs jumped into Detroit traffic by now. So shout out to you if you fall into any of those categories!
The thing about those rose colored glasses I was talking about earlier, is that you never really know when you’re wearing them. It’s hard, especially in a relationship sense because sometimes when you’re so in love with another person, you think every single thing they do is the best, most impressive thing you’ve ever seen. I’ve experienced it first hand, and also watched it happen too many times to friends of mine who get involved in a relationship that is put so high up on a pedestal, the ground is too far away to even see anymore. The honeymoon stage fades, the effort starts to lack, and soon you’re just gripping at straws to keep your relationship afloat all while not realizing that you’re putting way more effort into a partnership that will never be reciprocated back.
As human’s, it’s in our nature to want to experience life in a perfect balance; we crave that homeostasis of comfortability and security and if you say you don’t you’re lying so shut up. When things are off, we don’t like it. No one likes when a friend talks behind our backs, when a romantic partner cancels plans for the third time this week, or when we don’t get assigned the project we wanted at work. When our life feels off balanced we do things to over compensate for the areas where things are lacking; we make excuses for our shitty friends and effort-lacking partners, we blame ourselves for maybe not working as hard as we thought we were, and we raise the mediocracy in our lives higher and higher up on pedestals to try and convince ourselves that being comfortable means being happy when in reality you’re really just undermining your own worth.
News flash home girl, there are jobs, people, and boys out there who will actually value that pretty little mind and your pure little soul far more than what or whoever is making you feel underappreciated right now. I’ve learned lately that it’s important to take off those rose colored glasses and let our eyes adjust to the dim lighting of all the half-ass bullshit we’ve been subjecting ourselves to all this time, and start heading towards things and people that radiate light into your life.
If you don’t like the spot your standing in, the job your working at, the group of friends you spend your weekends with, or the boy you keep trying to convince yourself is ‘the one’ when all 49 red flags have proven otherwise, please, pick yourself up, crack those glasses in half, and start moving on towards the things in life that make you feel alive, make you feel appreciated, and make you feel deserving of the love your supposed to have.
Because you do deserve it, you really, really do.
‘til next week…
xoxo,
Carlie Bradshaw
Sex & The Suburbs 