3 Thursday - Inspiration on Life, Depression, and Inner Beauty

I always find myself scouring Pinterest at the darkest hours of the night. 
I've been having a rough week so I thought I would share a few my favorite quotes that have gotten me through some hard times. 

Image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/kohanart/4916218209/

In all honesty this is something I have learned the hard way. 

When I was younger I took everything for granted. I took life for granted. I didn't live each day like it mattered, I breezed by waiting for the day to end. 

When my grandpa died was when it really HIT me. The littlest things matter the most. It's not about living it's about LIVING. Truly and fully. And I'm not telling you that you need to go out and do something super important and amazing and fun right now. What I am telling you is to live. To learn to love life as though it could end any moment. Spend time with your loved ones as though today could be the last day you see them. You don't have to do something brilliant every day. Do something that you consider to be brilliant. Whether that brilliant is sitting with your mother and watching TV or baking with your grandma. Learn to appreciate the little things. It took me 19 years to figure that out. 

Image from pinkwallpaper.blogspot.com

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. 

I cannot begin to tell you how very true that is. After 16 years of school I have discovered that EVERYONE will try to mold you into something you are not. It does not matter who it is, teacher, friend, students, jerks you meet on the sidewalk. Everyone will want to change something about you. What you must always remind yourself is that you are perfect. It doesn't matter if you aren't a size 0 or that your boobs aren't quit perky or that you don't have that 6 pack abs that your bros at the gym have. YOU ARE PERFECT. Every inch, meter, foot, of you is perfect. You do not need to change so society accepts you. Simply say FUCK YOU to society and go on your merry little way. 

Image from healthyplace.com

I found this one one day when I was scrolling. It stuck to me like glue. There was something about this little quote that made my mind wander. 

When I was a kid in middle school I struggled with serious depression. The only thing was, I didn't realize it. I didn't see what was happening to me. All I knew was that I wanted out of life. 

When I was in 7th grade I started to cut myself. I would hide sharp things in my pillow. Some days I would escape into the school bathroom to find the sharp blade of release. This is what happened. Am I proud of it? No. But I was 11 and had no idea what was happening. I didn't know who to turn to.

In 8th grade I thought about suicide. A lot, more than I'd like to admit. I thought of it as a way out from the horror of my mind. It was a friday evening after school, my parents were still at work and my sister was still at daycare.  I went out to my woods and stood in front of a tree for nearly an hour or so debating on whether or not I should take the chance. Later that evening I heard my mother calling me for dinner. I dropped the rope and went back to the house. 

Life isn't just about getting through the day. I can't begin to believe how grateful I am that I didn't go through with what I had planned. My greatest accomplishment (even if I didn't know it at the time) was continuing to live when I truly felt as though death was the way out. I can't begin to say how important it is. 

Today I am 19, I graduated with honors from high school, I am sophomore in college, I came out Pansexual to my family,  I have a magnificent boyfriend whom I love more than my own life and we plan on moving in together soon and maybe I might even marry him (who knows?), my life has continued. While many days are a continuous struggle to fight myself and to get out of bed. My world is slowly getting better. I am working on fighting and living every day to the best of my abilities. Some days it takes more than work than others. 

I am happy I didn't use the rope.

xoxo

Courteney

Learning to Love Myself

When I look at magazines my heart sometimes crumbles. 

Seeing images of these GORGEOUS girls with their gorgeous bodies makes me jealous. Seeing them in their bikinis and their little skirts with thigh gaps and flat stomachs kills me. When I was younger I would have KILLED to look like them. To be able to wear a bikini with confidence, to be able to wear whatever I wanted and look good, this was my dream.




photo courtesy of http://colorful.bigbangfish.com/

As I grow older I often find myself walking around the mall. More often than not I tend to spot something that I adore, either a dress or some jeans or a cute top. I rush to the display to search for my size and then return empty handed. This happens a lot. It happens again and again and again till I want to go into a corner and cry. And sometimes I do. I'll cry in the shower, I'll stand naked in that mirror picking and prodding at the fat under my skin. I'll jump and watch the fat jiggle underneath, then to only turn around and burst into tears.

When my boyfriend holds me I am self conscious. When he touches me I sometimes want to shrink into a shell. With the fact that he can feel every roll and every inch of my body that I hate. He has seen it. And yet he still calls me beautiful, and sometimes, I wonder if he is saying that to make me feel better.

My entire life I grew up "fat". When I was in middle school I had already reached that 180 lbs and by high school I was 200 lbs. I would always hear "All you need to do is eat better." or "Just exercise and you'll be skinny." What people didn't realize was that I did exercise and I did watch what I ate and counted calories and such. No matter what I did or what I tried. Nothing Worked. And so I grew to hate myself.

But it wasn't just my body I hated, it was me. The entire me. With my body looking as it did, in my eyes I was disgusting, worthless. My self hate grew and grew and grew. It grew so large to the point where my self hate started to feed off onto my friends. And that made them hate me. Without realizing what I was doing, I started to lose everyone I had cared for in high school.

When senior year came around my life changed drastically. My whole world shifted, some for the better, some for the worst. We lost our home, the home I had grown to love, the home I had lived in for nearly 16 years. It was gone, all in the blink of an eye. So we moved in with my grandmother. For a year I lived there. For a year I shared a room with my mom. And it took that one year to change everything.

It all began my senior year. I felt new, like maybe a fresh start at a new school would give my life some meaning. In a way, it did. I'm not sure what exactly helped but there were two teachers that truly made an impression on me for the one short year I was there.
The first one was Mrs. Woodcock, she was gorgeous. From the tips of her toes to the hair on her head she was wonderful. Her personality shined through everything. Mrs. W was the schools art teacher, art just happened to be one of my favorite subjects. She would never ridicule a student for their work being "horrible" (even if it was REALLLY bad). She gave criticism that helped you and moved you forward in the world. She does'nt know this but she helped me through a lot that year.With my world being turned upside down I found that art was my stable point. Mrs. W showed me that I could do anything, I could be anything, I could grow and create and learn to love through art... and that's what I did. Mrs. W helped me start to love myself once again. In the most simplest way too. Through art.

You can ask yourself, "What does art have to do with loving yourself?" Let me show you something.



Photo courtesy of www.wikiart.org

This painting is by artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir and titled simply, "Woman After Bathing". The painting, created in 1896, depicts a larger woman drying off. Now what does this have to do with self love? This painting is considered ART. This painting of a larger woman with meat on her bones and rolls and thickness is ART. She doesn't look like the women in the magazines and online, she is REAL and she is gorgeous. A man sat down and thought she was so beautiful that he had to make her last forever, in a painting.

This got me thinking. If a woman of a larger size is artwork, why not consider myself art as well? Afteral I look like her size, I have rolls and stretch marks and thickness and meat on my bones. Why do I hate myself for it?

And slowly I began to learn to love myself more and more.


Learning to love me for me was one of the hardest things I have ever done in life. Every day I still struggle with loving myself. Life is a work in progress. Much like clay, you have to keep working with it to get the results you want.


Today I am 19 and 206 lbs. I am a pant size 16 and a shirt size XL. I am PROUD of who I am. Yes I still struggle with loving myself, and some days are better than others.


 With 19 years of self hate you begin to ask yourself, is it really that bad? Am I really fat? Am I really ugly? The question I answer to myself today is no. I am beautiful, I am perfect, I am a fantastic individual that is worth living.

And so are you.

xoxo
Courteney

Something New

Welcome One and Welcome All.

Step right through these doors into a world of.... okay in reality there are no doors you're walking into nor is there a world I am showing you. What I will be showing you is random stuff throughout the year of me.

In all honesty I have 0 experience with blogs. So if my fuck ups in blogging amuse you be sure to follow!

Today marks the opening of my blog. In reality it's an exciting event (at least for me). One that I hope will prove to be rewarding in a sense (bring on the moola!).

 I am opening the blog to give me a place to relieve my stress and show off my creative sides.

I wanna show off some paintings and crafts and some pinterests fails. But I also want this blog to get serious. I suffer with severe depression and anxiety and this blog will be a way to help me get through all that. After all, writing is one of the best medicines. Maybe I might even be able to help a few readers out there deal with their anxiety and depression as well so win win!
I'm not really sure how this all works. I guess the best way for me to do it is to start the blog and learn as I go. After all that is what i do best.

A little about myself....
I am a current college student headed into dental, I will have my associates in science in a few years (YAY!). I have a guinea pig named Meadow (pictured below) she is an adorable Peruvian/texel mix (although the texel doesn't show).

 Isn't she adorable?!

Please feel free to leave comments and suggestions on how this all works.

Until midnight

xoxo
Courteney