The Plus One (A Brush With Love, #3)

by Mazey Eddings

“We struggle too. We hurt. We handle situations badly or get depressed or anxious or anything else. We’re all flawed. 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.”

“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.”

You show up for an hour, maybe two, and you have no other responsibility in the world than to focus on yourself. Your feelings. Your thoughts. It’s dedicated time to find yourself fully and deeply, with another person there to help when needed. Therapy is scary because it requires you to be brave. It’s one of the most radical forms of self-love.”

“I know it’s not a rational thought. Like, I one hundred percent recognize that these fears and this need for extrinsic validation doesn’t determine my worth. But it doesn’t stop me from feeling

The problem with being self-aware and introspective while also being, admittedly, emotionally damaged was that Indira could reason through her feelings and their source and how they didn’t serve her, but she also couldn’t stop the ruminating circles of feeling them.

Because feelings matter. They’re chemicals mixing with experiences and some deep, unknown part of a human soul. They make us who we are

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.”

a great deal of our perceptions of our experiences and the trauma we’ve been a part of creates these fantasies of alternative paths our lives could have taken. We preserve worlds of what could have been. Worlds of what-ifs. It’s easy to get trapped there.

“These alternative realities can claw at us almost as much as the memories of what really happened. But we have to find those sticking points. Ease our brains away from them. What we have is the present moment. We have our feelings and emotions and the best thing we can do is honor those pieces of ourselves. We can’t change our participation in the past, but we can pave the way for a healthier, mindful future.”