Hello friends. Starting this week off a little bit different and giving you some content on this lovely Monday morning instead of a weeknight at midnight when I get a random spark of inspiration lol…
I’ve had some things on my mind lately that I would like to project onto this Microsoft word document and maybe one of you lovely people can resonate with what I have to say.
For a long time, I’ve thought I was a bad person.
Not because I’ve done anything specifically wrong, but because I took the opinions of what other people have about me into consideration when deciding what kind of person, I thought I was. I thought that I had to explain every decision I made, every word I expressed, every feeling I felt, every single thing I did… I thought I NEEDED the validation of others to feel and to be okay in this world.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not claiming to be perfect; I’ve never been perfect, and I’m never going to be perfect. I get irritated, I get upset, sometimes I choose the wrong words to say, or act on emotions and say things I don’t necessarily mean, and sometimes I need breaks- I’m a human after all… I always thought that being a good person meant that on top of doing good things, you had to prove to the entire fucking human race that your intentions are pure and that every single person needs to see your decisions, your words, and your actions the exact same way that you do.
Something I’m starting to realize as I get older is that we need to stop explaining ourselves. Your friends- your true friends, don’t need your explanations and your enemies won’t believe them anyway. In situations, there are always three sides, the way one person sees it, the way the other person sees it, and the way the rest of the world sees it. The way I perceive a situation with my own background, values, and intentions is going to be completely different than another person from another walk of life, another mindset, and another point of view.
My point is, there is no sense stressing yourself the fuck out because the entire world doesn’t love you.
Up until probably a year ago, it really bothered me if I didn’t feel like every person, I came in contact with didn’t absolutely love me. Typing that out now seems utterly ridiculous that I would exhaust myself so much to the point of needing validation from every other person on this planet that I was doing okay instead of just doing life for myself.
The other day I had someone bring up a situation from probably TEN fucking years ago. To get to the point, and to keep this blog post under 5834954830 characters, I’ll keep this high level lol. I was in a situation where a friend of mine- someone I considered to be super close to me at the time, did something REALLY fucking shitty to me. The situation involved me getting extremely hurt due to something that occurred between this close friend of mine and this guy I thought I was in love with (LMFAO). Even though this happened when I was literally a teenager, it was something I held onto for a really long time because it was one of the first times in my life that I figured out that even those closest to us can still turn out not to be who we think they are. So, circling back here, this situation was re-brought up to me the other day, and in this conversation, I was made aware that the friend of mine who did this shitty thing to me, had been explaining this story to a bunch of people the complete opposite way. She explained how I was the one who did something shitty to her and that I was the one who ruined her relationship lol. When I first heard this, I hate to admit that it actually pissed me off. I was taken back because it just confused me how someone could twist a story from literally ten years ago just to make themselves look a different way, but I was also taken back because it made me realize something. This situation is a bit different because this person legitimately lied about the whole thing- probably to make themselves feel better years later for what they did to me, but I’m just gonna let that slide for the sake of the point I am trying to make:
Not everyone is going to see the world the same way you do.
The point is, not everyone is going to love you. In fact, the more passionate, out there, loud, confident, and happy you are, the more people there are going to be in the world that would live to tarnish your reputation. Here’s the thing about that reputation though- as much as we all would love for the world to see our true souls, the raw, loving, kind people we all are inside, we are all different versions of the person we are in the eyes of other people.
To people with a sense of humor, I’m the funny one, where to the more reserved people in my life I’m kind of quiet. To some people, I’m the raunchy one, and to others, I’m more of the innocent girl. To my best friends, I’m the one who would do anything for anyone, and to people who I think are shitty and I don’t waste my time with, I’m probably a lazy dud of a friend and probably a really big bitch. To people I’m attracted to I’m flirty and witty, whereas to people I might not be interested in, I’m super dull and unexciting. We all play different roles in different people’s lives just like how someone who is our best friend, is someone else’s enemy, how someone we are head over heels in love with is someone that someone else hates with every ounce of their being.
If you’re anything like me and live to please the world before you live to please yourself let me give you this big ass reminder: you are one person, doing what you can. You will not be the best at everything you do every day, but you’ll be the best at something. You’re going to make decisions that some people are obsessed with, and you’re going to do shit, say shit, and post shit that people are going to talk shit about and dm to all their friends. Life is meant to be shared with other people, but at the end of the day, your happiness, your contentment, and your wholeness does not come from the validation of other people, of things, of jobs, of praises, and of satisfaction from other people.
So, to all my feelers of the world, all my lovers, my pleasers, my worriers, and to the people who think they’re doing it all wrong- you are doing just fine. Stop living life just to check off a list of all the people you are making happy and start checking off a list of things you know are pure and good for you.
The people who don’t truly know you, and love you don’t matter, and the people who truly know you and love you won’t mind.
May your last week of February be everything YOU want it to be, and may the silver linings of life get you through it all.
xoxo,
Carlie Bradshaw
Sex & The Suburbs 