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“I just feel useless. I feel like I’m this broken mess that will fail others because I can’t even fix myself.”
Your emotional struggles as a human are not a moral judgment of your worth, and they’re not a reflection on your ability to help others.”
“Sitting with these feelings is a great place to start with healing from them.”
“If sitting with them were comfortable, we wouldn’t let them fester until they infected our hearts and our heads. But we avoid. We throw ourselves into work or vices or others because it’s easier to focus on those things than our own hurt.”
“Therapy, I mean. It seems so weird. I don’t know how you do it.” Indira let out a small laugh. “I mean, therapy is weird.” Jude looked at her like she’d just divulged definitive proof that aliens existed. “Think about it,” she continued, shrugging. “You sit down and unpack all of your deepest feelings. You share the rawest truths of who you are to another person. One you don’t even know. Of course that makes you nervous. I think it makes lots of people nervous. It’s a nerve-racking thing.” “Oh, do go on,” Jude said, waving his hand. “You’re really selling it. They should have you do
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“Caring is kind of your thing,” Jude said at last. “I’ve known you since you were what, five? Six? Even when you were little, you cared about everyone. Everything. I imagine it’s hard to stop something that’s your nature.”
“We place these expectations that being aware of our brain or emotions lying to us means that we should automatically be able to get over it,” Dr. Koh said, eyes locked on Indira. “That’s simply not how it works. We wouldn’t expect someone with asthma to recognize they have asthma and then be able to go and sprint a mile without needing an inhaler. Healing from those internal wounds takes time. Sometimes a lifetime. But it’s the willingness to work on it that matters.”
Was being roasted her love language?
I think your brain has convinced you that you don’t deserve to be cared for. Well, I’m calling bullshit. Because I care. And I’ll keep caring. I care now. I cared yesterday. I’ll care tomorrow. Every single day, I will sit outside your doorstep. And I’ll wait. I’ll wait until you need me, and I’ll be ready. Nothing you can say will change that.”
“I’m not looking to fix you,” she said, staring straight into his eyes. “I’m here to love you.”
I think your brain may have convinced you that everything you’ve seen and experienced destroys your ability to be happy. That’s not true. You can hurt and also be loved. You can feel sadness and also laugh and feel joy. Good emotions can coexist with hard ones. You can struggle and suffer and learn to heal while you also love. The best place to start is by giving yourself permission to feel with abandon. Feel everything.”
“It’s okay to sit with the feelings that don’t feel good,” Dr. Koh had said. “It means your body is digesting them, taking what it needs from the sensation and processing the rest to leave you, or guide you on what to do to honor those feelings. Express them to others.
She didn’t want to carry that anger anymore; it took more work to sustain than she was interested in putting into it.
“Living—fully, unabashedly, fearlessly living—isn’t the easy way out, Jude,” she said. “It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever fucking do. Numbing yourself is the easy part. Hiding in self-loathing is the escape. You want to make those losses worth it? Then fucking choose yourself,
You’re the person I love. You’re the person I would do anything for. I’m not here to fix you, Jude. I’m not. And I never was. No one can single-handedly fix another person. We all hurtle through life, getting bumped and cracked and broken along the way, but we are solely responsible for our own healing.”
Trauma and happy endings aren’t mutually exclusive. They aren’t even separate entities that have to be experienced at different seasons of life. You can hurt. You can struggle and suffer and learn to heal while doing it. You can stare into the face of your pain and also choose to love.
“Loving yourself isn’t a sin, Jude. Giving yourself love won’t diminish the love and caring you give to others. In fact, it’s one of the best things you can do for the people in your life.”
“When you love yourself, you commit to knowing yourself,” Indira said, moving her hands to play with his hair. “And when you know yourself, you also know your needs. Space. Attention. Help. Tenderness. Being able to acknowledge these needs in yourself lets you voice them to others and also understand more fully when others voice their needs to you. It allows you to experience your emotions more fully. Be more present in each one with the people you love.”
“That’s your guilt trying to tie you down,” José said after a few moments of silence. “Surviving, like so many other aspects of life, isn’t a meritocracy. Someone’s good deeds or their bad ones don’t determine when or how they die. Your internalized perception of your worth, or lack thereof, doesn’t change the fact that you are here. You are now. And you have the choice to do with it what you will.”
she learned to find value in who she was and not in the problems she could fix for others.
