Couch Therapy

Dress: Anthropologie Henley Striped Day Dress

Shoes and Necklace: Urban Outfitters

Earrings and Bracelet: The Limited

 

"Sitting on a thrift store couch, I'm trying to get this all down." - Ben Gibbard

Teefs, motherfuckers! I'm giving so much teeth in that last photo that my mouth literally hurt when I was doing it. You like that? Yeah? Well good, because shit's about to get depressing up in here, so if you can't take reality, don't read any further. Just look at the pretty pictures and go about your sunshiny day.

I did it again. I got sucked into a Facebook rabbit hole and found myself looking through hundreds of perfect people/lives photos on Sunday afternoon while simultaneously consuming an entire bag of Oreo cookies. Why do I do this to myself? No good ever comes of it. What's worse is that I didn't do it on my own Facebook feed this time. Nope, I was all up in Jerry's feed stalking people from his former life. You know, the ones who used to talk to him before he got with "the tramp."

Two hours later, I closed the cover on my Ipad, laid back, and let the depression settle in. I felt like I was back at square one again. All the work I had done over the last 2 years on my self-esteem vanished into thin air as I observed the still images of the good people of Jerry's former life smiling and living the good life. And by good, I mean that in my mind they were the "good ones," and I was one of the "bad ones."

Making matters worse, I went back and read a series of messages I had sent to one of these good people awhile back where I had tried to be cordial and explain our side of the story. I was met with words like "tramp," "disgusting," and "selfish." This person couldn't fathom why I would want to get to know them, and I was left wondering how someone could use such hateful words to describe a complete stranger. When I thought about it, it was really ironic, because the answer was that the "good" person was coming from a place of hate, and the "bad" person was coming from a place of love.

And then it hit me...It's just like those photos up there or the ones that I had just wasted my life looking through. You can't judge a book by it's cover, and you can't judge a person by their picture or even their actions. It's what happens internally within a person, the things we can't see, that truly defines them.

No one can ever really understand the motivations behind our actions, or the internal struggles we go through to get there. This is precisely why it shouldn't matter what other people think of us. It's also why labeling some people as "bad" and others as "good" makes absolutely no sense. It's not that black and white. People are complicated. We all possess both both good and bad attributes. The best we can hope for in life is to believe in ourselves and to give our love and affection to those people who appreciate our good and who love us despite our bad.

“The problem I have with haters is that they see my glory, but they don't know my story...”