dear me,

Don't be nervous.

You are overthinking. You are rationalizing irrationally, and ruminating. Relax.

It's almost 9:00pm. You yourself had standards. You weren't going to go in so late. So of course it's okay for him to say he's getting ready for bed when you say you want to come and bother him. It doesn't mean he's annoyed by you, or bored of you. It doesn't mean he's getting tired of you.

IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT.

It simply means that he's getting his priorities straight, (you know all the years you've known him he's always gone to bed early) and decided to make a decision that's in his best interest.

The fact that he stayed on the phone with you yesterday until he said he was sleepy and his eyes were burning  means that he actually decided to talk to you even though he was super tired, just because you felt like talking. Until he literally couldn't keep his eyes open anymore.

And then he texted you in the morning.

Real life is responsibility. You guys have not had a real life together so far.

It's been shirking one responsibility after the other, spending entire days and half of nights together...postponing deadlines and playing hooky from the real world.

But it can't go on like that forever. Not if you want to be a responsible adult and you wish he would be too. Not if you want to travel the world and someday have a family of your own.

Isn't it amazing how your imagination can twist things into ugly, negative pictures? Let's retrain it.

You are worthy. You are totally worth it. You're any decent guy's dream girl - no, WOMAN - and you have a lot to offer. You're talented and kind, patient and hey...you ARE beautiful.

You may have acne scars and marks from old piercings...but they tell a story, a story of who you are and what you've been through and what you've done. You also have freckles in hidden places and a smile that people have said lights up a room.

You're blessed with friends who accept you for who you are, even when they've seen you at your worst. YOU don't even know what you look like at your worst.

He does.

But although he is intertwined, this is not about him. This is about you, you believing that you are an amazing individual...hear that? INDIVIDUAL. No one else can offer what you can to the world. You have your own unique set of experiences and viewpoints that color each and every one of your actions. No one else can do anything the way you can.

And that is your strength.

And speaking of strength? You're insanely strong. Do you realize that you managed to care for your ailing mom AND hold down a stressful full-time job? You learned some lessons from it, too. How to be compassionate. How to be a rock for someone who is terrified and hurting.

And it didn't break you.

Sure, it bent you backwards and in half and twisted you into unrecognizable shapes, it displaced you and turned you upside down and wrung you inside out. It drew blood and tears from places you didn't know could leak, and it left some ugly scars that - you guessed it - add to your story.

But you're still here.

It's different now. Life is different. YOU'RE different.

That's a good thing. It means you've been through the worst you could imagine and come out on the other end still standing. Well. Standing. A lot of times you had to crawl to get to where you are now.

You are strong. And there are days where you will be tired, tired of being strong and tired of being sad. But just because a wrestler needs to rest doesn't mean that they aren't strong.

Things will always come to hurt you. That's life. If it's not one thing, it'll be another. But you can't keep on being afraid of it coming from all sides. You've survived everything in your life so far. You'll survive the rest of your life as well.

The thing is, life is made of a lot of ups and downs. And while that sounds so cliche, it's a fact. Good things happen, bad things happen, and a lot of nothings happen, too. The trouble is, there are a lot of good things tucked inside the nothings, and that makes them hard to notice and remember when the bad things come up.

But you just have to remember that they are there. And that you will always be okay.

Even though some times you won't.

But that's okay too.

Because you're still here.

And you can do this.