Loving Myself Again

For what feels like the past few years of my life, I have been saying “this will be the Summer when I focus on me”. While I do try to put in that effort, it can be hard because Summer is when I get to see my hometown friends as I am away at school for the majority of the year. Well, this year I am staying on campus for the first time in the Summer… meaning I am alone for most of it.

This is going to be the year that I finally focus on myself. On bettering my mental health, my physical health, and connecting with my emotions again. Not only do I think that this is going to be something that benefits me, but I think that this will also better the connections that I have with the people I love for varying reasons.

I have been trying for the past I don’t know how many months to kick myself in the ass and actually take care of myself again. I can always tell when things are beginning to get bad again because my room turns into what looks like the aftermath of an F5 tornado going through. We have reached the end of the tornado and we are just left with the debris to clean up again.

Not only does my room see the effects of me not being well, but so does my body. There are days where I don’t eat anything and just sit around the whole time. On the flip side of this, there are days when I am only eating and completely manic.

Ah, the “M” word - MANIC. It’s okay to say it. It’s part of having bipolar disorder. It is part of who I am and while the meds that I am on help, they don’t absolutely prevent these moments from happening. They lessen the effects of it happening… yay.

In the past few days I have gone from eating nothing to eating everything at once, I dyed my hair blue (which doesn’t sound out of character until you remember how hard I worked to get it to my ~almost~ natural color again), haven’t slept more than 3 hours at a time, and cut my hair by myself… again.

I have begun to spiral once more.

Here’s the thing: I noticed it this time before it got too bad. I know I have to clean my room, do my laundry, and find an outlet to put all of these emotions into. Which leads me to my next point - I am going to start loving myself this Summer.

I am going to prove that the only person that I need to love me is myself. The only attention that I need is from me. The only one who can make me feel both good and bad about the things that I am doing is myself. I am making this the summer of me.

I plan to start journaling again. I need to keep my emotions and outbursts in check. I want to go to The Kress (our gym on campus) whenever I can - at least once a day - so I can channel all this negative energy into something productive. The hair dye will wash out with time (I hope…) and I will be deleting my dating apps to ensure that I am making it a season of showing myself that I can do this alone. That I don’t need the validation of others to know my worth, my beauty, and ultimately that I am the great person I know I can be.

Starting in June (yay, June!) I will be putting myself before others for the first time since I was a child.

For the first time I am putting effort into loving myself again.

And for the first time, I’m not sorry about it.