5/23/25 (3)

What does it mean to let go of myself? 

Last night I watched this video by a person I've never seen before: https://youtu.be/_FTGZ5V4AWY?si=AP7KH5ZyuUHQrYSY. 

What I took away from the video: 

You need...

To be comfortable with changing. 

To no longer be obsessed with holding onto your past, reliving past moments as if they were the present. 

To let yourself go. 

To let yourself change. 

As I watched the video, I had an inkling of what I need to do next for my depression: 

I need to be okay with myself changing. 

I need to hold myself with gentleness even as I stumble. 

I need to accept myself and embrace myself no matter what choices I end up making, whatever consequence that brings. Because the fear of a change in my identity (as smart, efficient, special, and simply perfect) has been seeding this deep aversion to change, this clinging to an idealized image of my past self.

It is ok if I get a B in my classes. 

It is ok if I don't turn in that assignment on time. 

It is ok if I don't have an internship this summer or drop out of a summer program. 

First I need to just let myself go, let myself be, in order for the healing to take place. 

If I keep on suffocating myself, immersing my mind in thoughts of self-hatred and self-contempt, there is really no where else I can go but downwards, inwards toward even deeper self-loathing. 

But if I instead take my current state as a natural state of growth - a nonlinear and forward-looking path, where you sometimes go backwards or sideways - and see that I need to let myself go in order to further make progress in my life and get out of this self-repeatig hellhole. Then maybe I'll stop chasing my tail and look up to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So many people drop out of college for so many reasons. And not all of it is for financial or occupational reasons. Those who drop out because they can't stand the academics, they are still human even so. They still have potential to do great things and they are valuable human beings.

I'm probably not dropping out of college but I'm struggling with writing essays. I am struggling with an identity crisis, because I used to love writing and had some deep cathartic experiences while writing during my first quarter this year. But now I feel like my words don't make sense, they don't come so easily as I try to articulate my thoughts, and it feels as if my vocabulary is shrinking, my sentences factory-made and repetitive. My artistic craft of writing and my ability to express ideas efficiently and effectively, all of which bolstered my identity as a "writer" and a "scholar", are now crumbling. 

And that is okay. 

Because, although this is my reality as of now, this also will not be my permanent state. I will move on from there. Once I simply see and accept myself for where I am in my writing journey, I will continue to move forward -- I will read books, write poems, write little snippets of thought like this, learn and form interesting thoughts... And the only way that I can allow myself to work on my writing skill, without being constantly demoralized by the guilt of having "degraded" from my past competency level, is to let myself be okay with being in a constant state of change.

No one can grow in an environment that doesn't let them love themselves. 

You can't simply force yourself into self-improvement by berating yourself with criticism, shame, and remarks of inferiority. 

Even if the strategy might have worked in the short term -- and if you were really desperate, that could have been years of sustained self-hate -- it is never sustainable, because every criticism chips away a part of yourself, and at a certain point you will be so hurt and bruised and rotten that simply there will be nothing left inside you that can grow or keep you grounded. Immediate gratification of "progress" -> a part of you sliced off -> long-term degradation, instability, weakness. 

Stop thinking of yourself as a marble sculpture, with perfection reached by every subtraction of a  "weakness". Every slice leaves a terrible scar, called self-loathing. 

What you saw in yourself as "ugly" and "filthy" may have just been a seedling, a sprout with the potential to be grown into something profoundly beautiful. 

Imagine the possibilities once you start seeing yourself as a tree. 

Trees aren't rushing to bulk themselves up into rapid growth.

And they don't cut off their own branches because they don't like the look of it or because it's too thin and fragile. 

Trees don't grow from a perfectly concocted, pure mixture of nutrients (like the shiny agar gels you see in science labs). 

Instead they grow from a "dirty" soil, a messy mixture of dead parts, fungal networks, pieces of rock, sand, dust, microbiome, ... 

There must have been imperfections, rotten and therefore rich beds for growth, that provided the right conditioning for a strong, sturdy tree to emerge. You cannot grow if you are simply perfect, if you have no insecurities or weaknesses. Strength requires weakness from which new strength can emerge. 

To set yourself up for greater, sustainable long-term growth means accepting yourself for where you are and calmly sitting with it all, wherever you may be at that point in time. 

Trees don't grow in a linear progression, and they struggle and fail and tumble at times, but to reject those moments, carve them out to preserve an idea of perfection, you are depriving the tree of its future, its ability to move on and gradually emerge a stronger, sturdier tree.