“Loving You Was Like Going To War, I Never Came Back The Same.”

Self-care is doing what’s best for you for the long term. Sometimes that means taking it easy, sometimes that means pushing yourself. Sometimes it means saying yes, sometimes it means saying no. Sometimes it’s cutesy, sometimes it’s hard and frustrating and ugly. There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to self-care. Do it your way.

Maybe I will miss the comfort of my own home when I fly away to a new one to make it my own. I will miss how the light used to pour into my room in the evenings, or how I used to take a shower while those sunrays soaked my body more than the water ever did. I will miss watching myself act out music videos in the bathroom mirror while I'm taking a shower. I may miss the cold breeze of early winter and the hot showers I took then. But one thing I know for sure, is that I will try to find beauty wherever I go.

Whatever space I fill, wherever in the world that may be, I will always find things to be grateful for. I will find beauty in mundane activities.

That is the promise I'm making to myself inorder to feel alive, and not just be it.

“I’m sorry you were not truly loved and that it made you cruel.”

— Warsan Shire

“Lately I’ve been thinking about who I want to love, and how I want to love, and why I want to love the way I want to love, and what I need to learn to love that way, and who I need to become to become the kind of love I want to be…and when I break it all down, when I whittle it into a single breath, it essentially comes out like this: Before I die, I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they know they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe.”

— Andrea Gibson

“What-ifs and could-have-beens were not the way to move forward. She knew that from experience.”

— Judi Fennell

“We lose ourselves in things we love. We find ourselves there, too.”

— Kristin Martz

“Why was ‘plain’ a euphemism for ‘ugly,’ when the very hallmark of human beauty was its plainness, the symmetry and simplicity that always seemed so young and so innocent. It was impossible not to think that here beauty was one of the most important things about her – something having to do with who she really was.”

— Elif Batuman, The Idiot