ON BOUTS OF INSECURITY

You know how sometimes you know exactly how things will play out? Do A, then B, C, D, E follows. You've been in the same situation before and you more or less have an idea to where it'll lead. Entertain a negative thought, see it as a perceived threat, wallow in insecurity, let it engulf you, end up worse than where you started and much closer to what you were dreading. Yet, somehow, against your better judgement, you find yourself jumping back in, flailing like an idiot, as the riptide takes you underneath its dark waters.

As awesome and self-loving as I am, I'm capable of falling into the black hole of paranoia. You engage one unpleasant idea then soon enough, it exacerbates. You begin second-guessing yourself. You start doubting your value. You wonder if you're enough. On a different day, you would've easily shrugged it off but today you succumb to it. Maybe it's the hormones, maybe it's the weather, maybe it's something you watched; whatever it is, your self-worth falls short. You need reassurance, more than you regularly would. You indulge yourself with cheap adulations and quick ego boosts, which is fun until the glitter settles and gets stuck on your skin. What you considered only a few moments ago as nice and sparkly has turned into nuisance and dirt.

And that's when you come clean to yourself. It's not everything else, it's you. You're having an off day and no matter how difficult, you better snap yourself out of it. No matter how much doting you get from others, the only acceptance you need is from yourself, the permission to believe that you really are something more than the shitty feeling you're having. To see yourself for what you really are without the shadow of your current mood distorting your reflection. You need to see things for what they are, and not for what you fear it to be. And if that still isn't enough, you work hard to get there.

You see, bouts of insecurity isn't all that bad. It's where you go from there that matters. Either you reassess and regroup or you get stuck and wallow. The choice is yours, but I urge you to swim back up.