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She would never have to worry about fitting in—she wouldn’t be the type of person who valued herself based on other people’s opinions. She wasn’t going to be someone who followed what others did; she would be a leader. She’d be someone who would never have to rely on another person for anything.
She’ll be a beautiful hurricane.
Everything can change in an instant. And more important, it doesn’t matter how many people say no. All you need is one person to say yes.
with no direction or intention and other people’s feelings were not my problem. If I got a negative vibe from someone, I never overanalyzed it, because I wasn’t grounded, and I didn’t overthink anything. When I am grounded, I am as solid as a tree. When I’m not, I’m more like a leaf. I can say that now, because I know what the difference is.
It’s my state of mind that determines my behavior on drugs, and if I’m in a good place in my life, and I’m grounded, drugs are fun, and so am I; if I’m in a bad state of mind or in a bad time of my life, drugs will only make me defensive or angry, and that’s when I bite.
Don’t be a product of your environment, Chelsea. Make your environment be a product of you.” This was the definition of sisterhood.
I was learning the power of keeping my opinions to myself. My friends became confused and slightly alarmed.
just stopped socializing so much, and I started hanging out alone. There was a woman I had to find.
No doctor or scientist had to tell me twice to stop hanging out with other people. Everyone had been annoying the shit out of me for my entire life, and with the help of therapy I had finally come to understand the importance of being able to spend some quality time by myself.
One of my biggest takeaways from my work with Dan Siegel was learning about nonreactive behavior: How to take something in, consider it, and then formulate a response instead of reacting to everything in the moment and with a temper. To understand that most things are not in your control, and that one of the only things that you can control is your reaction. You can choose to take something in, and to be calm and thoughtful with your response—or you can blow your gasket every time you hear or see something you don’t like, like I did for my entire childhood and early adulthood.
I was even wearing AirPods in my own home at this point, and I wasn’t on a phone call or listening to music; I was merely hoping no one would interact with me.
The quicker you accept a situation, the quicker you move through it and on from it. Let it go, and see what the universe drums up for you.
The people who don’t get you are not your problem. Sitting around and thinking of all the people who don’t love you or don’t want to hang out with you diminishes your own light. Focus on where the light and love come from and park yourself in front of that. There are many moments in life when your own light is all you need.
I want to be sitting on my deathbed knowing that I went for it. I’m going to get sick and die at some point, and I would like in that moment to smile at the life I lived. That I had Guts. That I had standards. That I loved people intensely. That I lived in a loud, brave way.
Triumph isn’t always winning. Triumph is being grounded enough to know that people will come and go in your life—and instead of racking up all the reasons they deserved to go by being bitter or angry, remembering the things they brought out in you that no one had before.
The word “desperate” has no place in my vocabulary or life. There is nothing desperate about knowing your truth, your value, and not sublimating any of it for another person.
Telling people the truth can be an unpopular thing to do, and while I have lost friendships because of it, it won’t ever stop me from giving people my honest opinion. Telling the truth to the people you love, especially when it’s inconvenient, is honorable.
The loss of one thing means gaining another.
“No, Molly. I don’t have any extra drugs to give them, because I am taking all my drugs in order to deal with this onslaught. Speaking of which, I need you to find my sheet of LSD!” Molly will find anything I have ever lost, because she knows exactly how my brain works when I forget.
You heal people, and you healed yourself. You are valuable, and you are dependable. You’re always on time. You never leave people waiting, and you are generous—not only with your time, but with your love. You are kind. You care so much about people; about women, about children, about doing the right thing.
