Category: Overexposed: A Self-Love Project.

I think there’s something wrong with me.

I feel like normal people in our society have falling outs with the closest people in their lives because they simply grow out of those people; no trauma, no hard feelings, and still have love for each other form afar. Maybe they rekindle in the future, maybe not, but they have the space and opportunity to because their initial falling out wasn’t… malicious.

Almost every close relationship I had in my life ended maliciously and left some trauma behind. Almost every single one.

Hi, my name is Liz and I’m afraid of having close relationships in my life because of the downfall of most of then

I had this thought after having some resurfacing trauma occurring during the end of last month. I’ve had someone in my past reach out to me to offer their apologies to me and I feel like normal people would’ve handled it as “just another message”. Me; I couldn’t breathe. I felt everything come back up like vomit. The memories, the version of myself I left behind, and the anger and resentment I still feel. It all came back, and quite frankly – it set me back a bit.

A message shouldn’t leave me shook like that, and many of these messages from people in my past have left me in the same headspace.

It just made me think: is it me? Why do all my close relationships end in such tragic and negative ways? Why do they have to end with both of us having to deal with some trauma or something? Again, is it me that’s the problem?

At this point, I’ve made some awesome friendships and many of them are getting closer the more we talk; IRL or within the trading community. As excited of allowing these people into my life after not being able to do so with anyone for awhile, it still scares me that I somehow may fuck things up. I might do or say something they’ll hate and never speak to me again or we might just secretly hate me and I just shut down and run away and disappear from people’s lives which yes, that part is my fault, I shouldn’t do that.

I don’t mean to play the victim in this narrative; I know when I’m a part of the problem and I know I’ve caused these same people some level of trauma or anxiety as well. I am not perfect, and I’m trying to tell myself that it’s okay not to be and that I can hurt people too. I take accountability for the things I’ve done, the insecurities I created in other people, and for the things I said out of anger or because I didn’t know how to behave in past situations.

And maybe my past behavior is what causes these close relationships to end so horribly.

But I also know I’m a good friend. I will love you to the moon and back, I will most likely put you even ahead of my romantic relationships because, well, I have a hard time differentiating the two besides one of them involves sexual intimacy which isn’t what I even do anymore.

My point being is that I value the relationships in my life because I don’t have many to begin with. But, even the closest relationships have ups and downs. People have arguments and they make mistakes, but why does it seem like mine never seem that way? Mine are always threatened to end or are hateful; maybe it’s the way I see them?

I honestly don’t know. I just know that because of my past relationships with people, I am afraid to let anyone, romantic and friend, too close because I’m afraid they’ll end all in the same way as they did in the past.

But maybe this new chapter of life I’m on, the one making healthier decisions and reflecting on my behavior and being more self-awareness that maybe this time around my relationships will people will be a lot more healthier. Maybe the version of myself before just couldn’t speak up and handle things cordially, so I just disappeared whenever things got bad. Maybe these relationships in my life finally feel like I’m able to be myself and comfortable to the point that I don’t feel the need to silence myself if conflicts happen.

In this moment in time, I’m so grateful for the relationships I am building because I’m the happiest when I’m being social around people. For someone who deals with social anxiety disorder, it’s definitely weird that one of the things that make me the happiest is being social with other people.

So I hope that I am willing to be more accepting and open to develop close relationships again. I hope I am able to not be afraid of getting close to new people and to not let the judgement of past self dictate my decisions in the present. I’ll work on it, and I hope that this fear doesn’t stay for too long; I’ve met some amazing people in the course of a couple of months.

August has become one of the hardest months to go through for the many memories it carries.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I remember same of the most life-changing things that happen in August that I wish to one day forget completely.

Two years ago on August 18th, 2018, my family and I went to a mass for my grandfather who passed away just weeks prior due to lung cancer. His life span went from two months to two weeks, to then the following day finding out he passed on. I want to say our family hasn’t been the same since then and I don’t think we ever will be; he held us together like glue. Now? Well, we’d be lucky if we see each other twice a year or something. That day, I saw my entire family cry and for the first time since his death, I quietly mourned his loss. I’m not good with death and I always believed my role in the family was to be the strong one, but I was allow to cry and grieve that day. I didn’t. I didn’t grieve my grandfather’s death until I was by myself, in the shower, where no one was able to hear my cries.

One year ago, on August 19th, 2019, the decade-long relationship I had ended in a mutual agreement. Things were said to each other and we both know that our journey together was coming to an end. We had broken up way too many times before to not feel like it was time to officially call it quits. I remember simply asking my ex “what do you want?” and he asked, “from you?” and I just said, “for yourself.” It was the first time that I admitted out loud that I wasn’t in any position to love another person because I didn’t love myself. I knew I was doing nothing but hurting my ex by checking out, and it was my responsibility that I didn’t speak up sooner in hopes I’d feel better or be better. But, your soul just doesn’t work that way. She tells you when it’s time to let go and move on and she sticks to her word.

This happened the late-night before my first day at my first job. I was nervous about starting something completely new and ironically I was ending something that had been in my life for the last decade. I cried over the phone for hours, fearing that I was losing the one person in my life I thought loved me for me. I wanted to work things out, but I also knew that I needed to be on my own for a bit and figure out what I needed for myself. In hindsight, I feel guilty that my relationship had to be the thing I sacrificed in order to do that, but there was reason why it was sacrificed in the first place.

I woke up to then start my first day at my new job at the bookstore. I walked in and saw two people and my manager standing behind the register area, and I simply said, “hi, I’m Liz, ‘m here for the training…” With two other newcomers that day, I simply distracted myself from what had happened the night prior. None of the people at my job knew who I was, I guess I played the role of “normal young adult” well enough to the point that they didn’t know that my first day was the day my relationship ended until I told them once we got close.

One year ago, on August 25th, 2019, I cut myself for the first time since July 7th, 2013. I was on the phone with my ex, again trying to talk everything out and say everything that needed to be said in order to move on. It turned into an argument. It turned into a full-blown fight. I don’t remember the specific details because I used to dissociate whenever I was being yelled at or in a confrontation, but I remember feeling like all I wanted was someone to see that I wasn’t okay, that the way I’ve been acting and the way I’ve been for the longest time was because my depressive episodes were at its worst, that no, my depression wasn’t just the normal routine for nervousness at a new environment, my depression was the kind that those around me are empathetic about because they are afraid they’ll lose them to suicide. I just wanted someone to take my mental health seriously for once, and my scars on my arm was the only visible way to show people I am not okay. In hindsight, it was extremely unhealthy of me, but in that moment when I wanted someone to see me, I didn’t care.

The following day, on August 26th, 2019, it was the official first day of RUSH at the bookstore. Once my name tag went around my neck and I walked into that store to clock-in, I was “Hi, how can I help you?” Liz, not the “I cut the shit out of myself and the bruises are hiding under my sleeve because I’m deeply depressed” Liz.

Two years in a row, I lost two people who absolutely meant the most to me in this world.

My grandfather was the voice of wisdom, even when sometimes his age showed in his beliefs. My grandfather was my grandfather, despite him not being my biological grandfather. He took care of my sister and I since we were little kids; treated us like his own whenever we used to visit him and my grandmother just a block away from our house and eventually in Pennsylvania. He was tough, but he had a heart of gold and he was fearless. If he were to still be alive during this time of self-discovery and emancipation from my past, I believe he would be proud of me for doing something that was fearless. I believe he would still love the person that I am today.

My ex was my best friend before anything else, and to this day it still hurts that in this process of ending our relationship, I lost a best friend. I lost the friend that helped me pay for textbooks whenever I couldn’t cover them. I lost the friend that came to my uncle’s funeral to be by my side for a moment. I lost the friend that I used to support when it came to their wildest dreams. I lost the friend that was an amazing friend, and parts of me wish I haven’t fallen in love and made things complicated with our feelings. Unfortunately, things happen and if you sacrifice one aspect of the relationship, you sacrifice the whole thing, especially when both relationships were so intertwined with one another. I didn’t lose a partner that night over the phone, I lost my best friend.

Perhaps these are just some of the reasons why I’m so afraid to get too close to people. I’m afraid I’ll lose them, I’m afraid things will get complicated to the point you have to let them go, I’m afraid that one day I’ll say “see you later” and it ultimately turns into the last goodbye. I’m afraid of letting people too close to my heart. I can pour out my heart and tell you my history and my story because hey, I’m a writer, I tell my story almost in every post I write. What I don’t do often is let people live in my heart, just because it’s been broken so many times whenever someone moved out of it.

Theses August memories are some of the memories I still mourn, no matter how many years pass by and no matter how much I’m now in a better place. These August memories are some of the moments that make up my being as of today, and hopefully I am able to forgive myself and these memories and move on from them like I’m doing with the rest of my past.

My progress means the world to me.

I was once in a place were every time I made progress to getting better, I fell backwards and hit the ground harder than I did before. My highs were definitely some of the greatest moments and memories of my life, but my lows were even more dangerous and vicious, and whenever I was at rock bottom, I found myself not being able to get out of them for long periods of time.

Hi, my name is Liz and this past year I’ve made tremendous progress in my mental health and self-discovery, and I will not let anyone mess it up.

The other day, I nearly had an anxiety attack because a part of my past resurfaced into my present and it nearly scared me. It wasn’t anything serious or anything alarming, but it mentally took me back to the place I once was; the very sad, confused and depressed person that nearly wanted to hurt yourself just so that someone would understand the mental health issues I was dealing with. I was in this weird space that I was trying to take care of everything and everyone else before I took care of myself, yet I was self-aware of the destructive behavior I was tolerating from both myself and those around me and my soul simply was growing tired of how I kept treating myself.

At the end of the day, I needed to learn how to be alone, learn who I was after being tied to someone else for a decade, and discover the things that bring me unconditional happiness.

When I discovered those things like having coworkers who were now my friends or communicating with new people I found interesting, I realized just how lonely I was before this chapter of my life and how much of my happiness strives from being social. I was able to build friendships that allowed me to be completely myself; I was able to share my demiromanticism with my coworkers and moots, I was able to show parts of my humor to them without feeling judged; too long didn’t read, I just felt like people are actually liking me for me, even when my anxiety sometimes tells me they don’t.

So as I was battling the past resurfacing into my present, I instantly started to cry because it was overwhelming. I was angry, I was upset, I was heartbroken, but I also felt so proud of my progress. Talking to my sibling and mother about my progress during this time, all I kept on blurring out in tears was “I am so much more happy now like I have friends now and I have people I can turn to for support like I’m doing so much better.”

And I think anyone who’s still in my life and that was around for the past version of myself can say they see the progress I’ve made.

I have three different Instagram accounts for the various sides of my creativity; I have my personal, my collection account where I make fancy edits of my collection, and a trading account where I sell and trade Kpop photocards in hopes I am able to finish my collection. In this community that I’ve been a part of for a little over a month, I’ve never felt more accepted and felt like I fit into a community as much as I do there. At first, I was anxious of allowing myself to communicate with these people just because I felt like no one would get me or understand me or whatever, but now the moots I have in that community are some of the sweetest and most endearing people I’ve ever got the pleasure in meeting online.

On the day I had this major anxiety attack, my moots in the trading community kept reaching out to me for support with their endearing words, and tons of Seungsik photos to cheer me up. After even talking to one of them about what was happening, they said that in the couple of times we’ve spoken, they learned how much of an angel I was and how I was the nicest person and that I deserved to be happy. I cried my eyes out because of the overwhelming love this community has brought me, and like even me being able to run to my friend, Anthony, and just vent everything out and just to have him listen without judgement was just incredibly refreshing.

This is the progress I don’t want to jeopardize. This is the version of myself I dreamed of being when I was younger. This is the version of me that I always wanted to perfect, even if this version of me is far from being perfect. This is the progress towards my depression and SAD that I hoped for when I started to seek therapy back in May 2018. This is the journey I’ve wanted to be on, but was too afraid to ever go on. This is my progress, and I am doing what’s right for me in this moment and in this moment it’s for me focusing on my present and my future.

Of course, I’ll always have set backs and become nostalgic and sadness will get to me. I will have moments when I’ll still cry and get overwhelmed and parts of my past will resurfaced. It’s happening as we speak since the summer has always been the roughest time for me and it has been for the last three summers. I still get very triggered like it was just yesterday, but that’s just a part of the healing process; that’s just part of the trauma I internalized for decades of my life.

But even then, I will not allow my progress to not be progress anymore. I refuse to make major setbacks to the point where my progress is overshadowed by chaos. I will not allow anything, anyone, or any part of my past, present, and potentially future fuck up the progress I am making at this exact moment. I don’t tell myself often how proud I am for just being able to do what I’m doing, but I guess I do when I admire the progress as much I as do.

I am a prime example of the saying “things do get better.”

I remember reading a book for hours on end in the sixth grade at home when I first started mindlessly plucking my eyebrows. I was only 12-years-old.

I grew up with pretty much a unibrow. I was always teased for it, and without even knowing I guess I just started plucking it with my fingernails whenever I needed to keep my hands busy. The more I plucked, the more bald patches i had with my eyebrows and the thinner they became. I even remember one of my good friends in middle school looking at me and saying “you shouldn’t pluck your eyebrows, Liz, you need to pluck the hairs that makes that unibrow.” At first, I guess that stemmed from a place of feeling like over-tweezing your eyebrows was what pretty girls did. But as I got older and thicker eyebrows were now the trend, I still found it hard to stop plucking my eyebrows. At 26, it’s at it’s worst.

Hi, my name is Liz & because of my need to control everything in my life, I pluck my hair as a defensive mechanism for my anxiety. It’s called Trichotillomania.

Trichotillomania is what people call the “hair-pulling disorder”, it’s when people pull hair off of their bodies with creates bald patches on the places where there should be hair. This hair-pulling can happen on places like your scalp, eyebrows, private area, and even your eyelashes. While there’s no concrete tracing to mental illness, Trichotillomania can coexist with many anxiety disorders.

This was something I was very ashamed of talking about when I realized it’s become more than just a problem of “over-plucking my eyebrows”. It then transferred to plucking more than my eyebrows; it was now my hair from my scalp, body hair, even eyelashes.

After speaking to my therapist about it for the first time in late 2018, I realized that it was stemming from a place of anxiety and the lack of control I had over the situations going on around that time. I tried a stress ball for some time, anything to keep my hands busy and away from my face when my anxiety was at its peak. Unfortunately, it’s a habit that never really died out, and it has its moments when it’s not that bad and when it’s at its worst.

Last month it was at its worst.

I hate having to constantly cover up the bald patches with some type of makeup powder because it’s a reminder that I have this issue. I know that this issue only resurfaces whenever I feel like I don’t have control over my life or when I’m extremely worried about something that I’m shameful for doing or not doing. Last month it was at it’s worst because leading up to my first in-person visit with my bariatrics doctor since the pandemic happened, I was incredibly disappointed that I wasn’t able to stick to the whole “diet” during the time I was at home. In hindsight, I was extremely worried that I gained a lot more weight, and I was afraid to get my first weight-in after the pandemic and to see the number raise higher than I expected it to.

So, I take it out on myself, like it’s my judgement’s twisted way of saying “you deserve to feel like this.” Hence, I practically rip hair off my body.

I’ve dealt with this internal battle for 14 years now, and it’s tiring. It’s tiring having to feel like I’m only pretty when I cover up those things. It’s tiring to not be able to go a day without applying anything over the spots and just go out the way I’d like to go out. It’s tiring that people classify me as “one of those girls” (a guy has called me that before), the ones where you can’t take to the beach or a swimming pool because you don’t know what she looks like underneath the drawn on eyebrows and eye makeup. I don’t do it because I want to, I literally have to or else my issue becomes a topic of the day.

Also, I’m aware that this hair-pulling disorder is just another way of self-harming yourself that many people don’t talk about because you’re not leaving scars on your body and you’re not trying to kill yourself. No, but you’re punishing yourself for the things that you don’t have complete control over, and isn’t that one of motives of self-harm?

I’ve alluded to this for years now on the blog, and the reason I wanted to speak about it on the blog was because I’m tired of the energy it has on me. I’m tired of silently fighting something that will always have some sort of hold on me for as long as I live, or at least as long as I allow my body to feel like I need to have control in every aspect of my life. Maybe it’ll get better as time goes, but I also know that it probably won’t, but as long as I acknowledge it and know why it happens, I could at least try to focus my hands on doing something else.

This is me diffusing the energy behind something I’ve been fighting with since forever. It’s about time we finally spoke about it publicly and speak out its existence to the world.

I hate to admit this about myself because it’s such a toxic trait I have, but I have a bad habit of playing the role of victim when things go wrong.

I might’ve alluded to this in the past, but when I was younger (and even throughout my 20’s) I found myself becoming very defensive in confrontations, and even in situations where I was in the wrong I played the victim.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I play(ed) the victim.

Maybe it was embedded in me at a young age; I thought I could never do any wrong or hurt anyone on purpose and therefore I blamed my actions on the people around me. “Well, you made me do that; if you weren’t so mean to me then maybe I wouldn’t have done what I did.” “You’re the reason I self-harmed that night; what you did to me was so hurtful.” My teenage years sound a lot like that, and even though no one else had control of my actions and my decisions, I made them. Sure, people can influence your actions and decisions, but no one put a gun to my head and made me do anything. I did it because I either wanted to at the time and I allowed for it to happen.

But my toxic trait– the one I’m learning to reflect on and resolve– is that when I owe up to something, I seem to link it to an event or a reason from an outcome. As I think back, a lot of my arguments in my last relationship where I tried to explain my reasoning for something seem to be because of something else instead of just openly saying “I did this and I said that because I wanted to and I take responsibility for it.”

Of course, it’s not always so black and white like that. A lot of my bad decisions came from being in a bad place and being hurt by other people’s actions in the past. I’m not a saint; I do things to hurt those who hurt me first, and only because it takes so much to legitimately hurt me to the point where I’m willing to throw everything away and say fuck it, I’m hurting you back. It’s so fucking toxic, I know, but it’s the truth. Will I ever be able to not do that anymore? Maybe, and maybe not. Maybe it’s a defensive mechanism in me too deep-rooted to fix right away. At least I’m aware of it, right?

These days, I don’t try to play the victim anymore because it’s just unrealistic for me to try to obtain this perfect image. I’m only human and I’m bound to do some bad things to myself, to other people; it’s just the cycle of life. Of course, I can’t help but think if the “playing victim” thing is so embedded in me, that I don’t even realize that I do it. I worry that every time I try to tell my story or my truth, I sound like a victim. I sound like I need saving. I sound like people should feel bad for me.

The truth is, I don’t want people’s sympathy for my past anymore. I don’t the validation that my actions were justified because they weren’t. I also don’t need people to read my story and my truth on these posts and go, “well, damn, does she want us to really know all this sad shit? Is there a hidden agenda in the words that she writes on her blog?”

I write it for me. I write it to diffuse the negative energy behind my journey, not for a pity party.

The past version of myself, the one who tried so hard to obtain a certain image and level of perfection, would not tell you that she did things without thinking first. She would brag that she had the upper hand in a situation where she knew she was losing in. Everything was a damn competition to her because she was worried the people she loved would forget her, and even to this day this version of myself is afraid of being forgotten, but that’s another story for another blog post.

But what the past version of myself would tell you is that she felt like her voice and feelings were never heard. She found herself not speaking up for herself and prioritizing her feelings and whenever she tried to, people then threw it in her face that she was self-centered, inconsiderate, and always plays the victim. 

So, it wasn’t a surprise when I began to get those comments again when I was finally practicing prioritization towards my feelings and speaking for myself in situations. And possibly that’s why I still feel like I’m always playing the victim when I spoke up and wrote down my stories.

It’s something I’m always worried about when telling my story to people who I meet and that I trust with my baggage. I have a really good friend, Anthony, that I pretty much get philosophical with every now and then, and sometimes when we discuss things like our past selves and our journeys, I’m always worried if I come off as playing the victim when telling my story. Either or, I just try to be honest with myself as much as possible and learn how to stick up for myself, but take responsibility for my own actions in the scenario.

You don’t gotta hate yourself for your toxic traits, just be aware and accept that you have them.

I’m nowhere being famous on the internet, even more so well-known on the internet. Prior to starting my blog in 2017, I was a closed book. I never shared anything about myself that was too explicit or that would tarnish my “good girl” image, but once I started to get comfortable with myself and starting to become self-aware of the things and habits I did/had, I started speaking out about them.

But that doesn’t mean you know everything I was, everything I believed, and the time I lived growing up in my younger years.

I lived during the generation where LGBT+, POC, and any other minoritized stereotype was pitted as a joke. It wasn’t looked at as wrong, it was looked at as a part of pop culture, and a lot of the things we believed and said as teenagers and children reflected on that time.

I will openly admit that I take accountability for writing the N-word with “uh” at the end as an early teen thinking that it wasn’t offensive just because the “a” wasn’t attached at the end. I will openly admit that I fat-shamed, slut-shamed, and body-shamed in those years of my life, and said disgusting things that would label my younger self ignorant. I will be the first to publicly say that my actions as a young teenager reflected from the times I grew up in; where there used to be entire shows of Maury dedicated to the audience guessing if the person dressed in drag was a man or woman and where women were depicted as whores and sluts on Jerry Springer right after. I grew up where our favorite TV shows alluded to insensitive jokes about gender & race & mental disorders and nobody batted an eye at them.

My younger self was a product of those times, but I believe people change. I changed.

With everything happening on social media (particularly YouTube) and everyone cancelling each other for the things they did and said in the past is toxic and extremely triggering to me, and not because of my own toxic past, but because as a society, we so desperately want the word to change, but don’t accept people changing.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I was once never forgiven for my past even though the person I am today isn’t a reflection of it anymore, and it still triggers me to this day.

Holding people accountable for their past is one thing, but to still know a person for their present selves and to still not accept those changes because of their pasts is, to some extent on a personal level, cancel culture. Sure, no one is not reading my content or not following me or “cancelling me” on a professional level, but on a personal level, with the people you love and care about and are able to let go of their past to see them for who they are and you don’t get that reciprocated back to you, feels like that person is completely cancelling you as a person completely, even when you’ve showed time and time again your past doesn’t define you.

I explained time and time again that I wasn’t the greatest person as a teenager, and I lost all of those years being a really shitty person. I manipulated people into believing my lies, I broke up relationships for my own personal gain and emotions involved, I played the victim and then victim-shamed other people; I was a horrible person, and a lot of those past demons I still deal with just because they influenced such a huge part of my life, but I never knew that even actively changing and knowing better and being better that it would ultimately affect some of my most important relationships in my life.

Cancel culture triggers me because I know how it feels to try to prove yourself time and time again to people that simply just can’t see you through their tinted glasses of you. Cancel culture does nothing but confirm that no matter what you do to become a better person and no matter how much self-awareness you have, there are still people who will cancel you, and to have someone quietly cancel you that you love is the hardest fucking thing to go to.

It’s so tiring trying to prove your innocence and to prove that you say what you mean and you mean what you say. It’s extremely frustrating to sit there and have the other person tell you over and over again that they can’t completely forgive you for starts to make you feel maybe you deserve not to be forgiven for your past. Maybe you’re not any better than what you thought you were.

It’s those thoughts that triggered my self-harming episode last year in August.

Again, I’m not looking for validation or for a pity party; this isn’t what this is about. If you only knew me for who I was in the past and not for me in this moment, you have every right to not like me because I was toxic and problematic but if you know me now, 2020 me, not even who I was this time last year but for me in this exact moment and you still decide to judge me for my past and make assumptions of my character even after seeing me grow up into this young adult, then you really don’t know me.

I had a really good talk with my friend Anthony (which by the way if you’re looking for new music, listen to his music on Spotify under the name Svndwn) that was about our unhealthy pasts and how when we meet new people as the versions of our present selves, we want to be judged for what we do now, not for the things we did when we were young, dumb, and naive. And it’s true; why would I judge him for the things he’s done prior to the moment we became friends and vice versa? Sure, we can talk about it and take accountability for all of the things we did in our pasts, but it’s not really our place to judge each other for our actions if we weren’t there to witness them ourselves. Yes, that scale is so much larger and bigger when you have a huge presence on social media like YouTubers who been on the platform for the last decade, but in personal situations, if you just met someone, you decided to become friends with them for the person they are in this very moment.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that cancel culture, to any degree, gives me a bad case of impostor syndrome. I constantly question my motives and how I do and say things and if there is any problematic behavior I engage in being this version of me and like I said before, it’s so easy to get sucked into those thoughts when you once had someone you loved with everything not completely forgive you for your past.

I still live my life struggling to believe that I’m a good person because for so many years, it was alluded that I was no better than the person I was in my past. Sure, I made mistakes, I made dumb decisions even being 26, but never to the degree where I was making the decisions I made as a teenager. To see just how big this cancel culture is getting, it’s becoming even harder to speak out their truth and to see them just take accountability for themselves without people immediately seeing it as an motive to appear as the “woke, sensitive, inclusive” person. Some of us really shed that shell of our past selves, and if you decide to “cancel” or never forgive a person for their past, then why are you making the effort to even try to get to know them as the person now if your mind is already made up about them?

Leave my life if you secretly judge me for my past. Your mind about me is already made up.

Sometimes, I believe that the kindest and nicest people hold the biggest and longest grudges ever.

Perhaps it’s because we’re not confrontational and we’re constantly shoving things under the rug when things bother us that they just turn into grudges. We think that if we just internalize our feelings towards problems and such, they would resolve on their own. What happens instead is they turn into grudges, and now it’s more than just a problem you have with a situation or another person. It’s now something that affects you on the psychological level.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I hold some really nasty grudges.

I’ve always been a person that felt all the emotions and there were always extreme. I love hard, I care hard, and I get angry just as hard, especially when the issue presents itself more than once in situations. Even though I’m human and I’m allowed to feel`emotions other than happiness and such, I never allowed myself to reflect on my anger and tell myself why I was even angry in the first place for a huge chunk of my life. Sadly, it’s resulted in a lot of grudge-holding in my life.

There are some people who can live perfectly fine with the grudges they keep; to them, their grudges are just something reminding them that the toxic and bad people that were once in their lives have no place in their lives in the present day. For me, they are constant reminders that I hold onto parts of my past self that I wish I didn’t, and any sight or thought of the person I hold a grudge with brings everything back and it’s not the healthiest thing to be doing at my age.

I mentioned many times before on the blog that 2020 was the year that I was going to forgive myself for my past, my actions, and the people who I may have hurt or hurt me to finally stop carrying it on my shoulders like baggage. In this first half of 2020, I’ve made some revelations, breakthroughs, and made some moves in order to forgive myself and the things that happened, and a lot of this work happened because of therapy. I learned ways to take responsibility and accept that it happened.

Within this process, I was able to recall in detail everything that happened within the last decade and be brutally honest about it, despite how I felt about anything that would “tarnish” my image. Just being open and honest to that extent helped me kickstart this journey of forgiveness, but half of that journey also meant that I had to deal with my grudges.

Once they latch onto you, they suck you dry until you’re too exhausted to want to deal with them anymore.

I have grudges I’ve held since I was in high-school. The people who hurt me the most are still some of the people that I hold the strongest grudges for. I don’t want to ever know how they are doing, or if they’re doing well, what they are up to, or how their own growth has transpired. These people who I hold grudges with are somewhat dead in my world; they don’t exist, and I try to erase every memory I ever had with them. To some extent, I hold some grudges about my last relationship. They were simply things I wish happened differently and that I spoke up about. In a sense, I hold a grudge towards the person I was in that relationship, and present me hates the fact that past me let so many things slide and left so many things unsaid. Will I ever let go of that grudge? Honestly, that relationship ended 10 months ago; yet it still feels like it was just yesterday that everything came crashing down.

Slowly but surely, I am letting the grudges of my 18-year-old self just eat those old parts of me and leave me for good. That girl, the one who was the second girl in two different relationships, the one where she almost got raped for trusting a boy too soon, the one that lived in fear for a year straight due to Facebook death threats, the one where she was so broken inside that she cried on the bathroom floor for nights on end and cut herself with her own sharp fingernails and countlessly wrote poetry about wanting to die – that girl. She’s dying inside of me, and the grudges towards the people in this time period are being let go for my own mental health. To the lover that kept me then swept me and then watched everyone turn against me, I forgive you. To the person who explicitly wrote the many ways they wanted to kill me and my family, I forgive you. To the guy that thought I was easy and tried to have sex with me when I continuously said no and you called it “stubbornness”, I forgive you. To the person I was, I’m forgiving you.

Getting over my past relationship is now a whole new thing I’m slowly trying to let go as well. To move on from the last 10 years of my life just an overnight job; it’s surely not a 10-month job as well. The grudges I hold within that situation are present and I’m trying my hardest to not let it become a decade long grudges like my others. I’m confident enough that I’m mature enough to not let it get to that point; to be as forgiving as possible but keeping a healthy level of resentment because I know what my self-worth finally is.

So, some of the nicest and kindest people are the ones who hold the longest grudges because they avoid confrontation and project their issues to themselves.

Too bad that’s not me anymore. I will tell you how shit is these days.

I started “Overexposed: A Self-Love Project” a year ago based on a lie I kept telling myself in order to make myself feel better about everything else in my life.

Let’s fucking do some exposing. 

This series came out to express myself in a new light that I never did before in my life. For a person who was a closed book, this series gave me an opportunity to call myself out on the bullshit I was accepting and really get a lesson on what it meant to practice self-love and accepting to your body.

The series started off documenting my journey of accepting me and my fatness. I’ve been fat my entire life, and although I’ve been prepping myself for the surgery which was supposed to happen in July/August, it’s now probably going to happen at the end of the year. Just because I’m taking the surgical route to weight-loss, it doesn’t mean that I don’t accept my body in its current state. I am more confident about my look than I’ve ever been in the 26 years I’ve been on this earth. I don’t have long hair hiding my double chin anymore, I now wear dresses without the “tummy tuck panties” underneath, and quite frankly – I’m okay with the way I look. It’s taken me years to get to this place in my life, but I’m here, and that inspiration for starting this series wasn’t a lie. The whole “I’m happy with my life” mantra I was spitting out last year was.

Hi, my name is Liz and my 2019 self lied to everyone, including to herself.

The fact of the matter is, I wasn’t happy. I felt like my mental health was getting worse and no one around me understood that I mentally checked out of my relationship months before it officially ended, I was occasionally suicidal and I even resorted to cutting myself after 6 years of not doing so.

I still think back to that Monday morning when I went to work and my whole upper arm was covered in cuts and I had to keep the sleeves of my t-shirt down because I was afraid someone was going to see them.

I wasn’t in the right headspace last year and I admit that and accept that I was going through a major transition in my life. Perhaps I needed to land this job and get a new routine going in my life. Perhaps my relationship had to end for me to start being self-aware and take the time to be by myself. Maybe everything had to happen the way they did in 2019 so that the 2020 version of me can sit here and write my truths down.

I faked happiness until faking it wasn’t an option anymore.

The 2019 version of myself tried so hard to believe the things I was writing and the advice I gave out here because it was the advice I needed to tell myself. I needed to tell myself to listen to my soul and understand what she was telling me. I needed to sacrifice something in my life because I needed to take care of myself before I ended up killing myself. I had unhealthy ways of coping with my last relationship towards the end, even having thoughts of hurting myself so badly to make my ex understand what I was truly going through mentally. It’s such a fucking toxic thing to think and want to do, and I’ve realized that if I was still in the same mindset where I was when I was thinking those things, God knows where I would’ve been right now.

But nobody knew that because I didn’t want people to know the full story. I didn’t want people to know that I wasn’t happy, that I wasn’t doing the things that I advocate for everybody else. I truly wasn’t myself for the majority of 2019, and I look back now and see that the person who wrote those posts and you guys read them wasn’t me.

It was my facade, it was my persona, it was the thought that if I wasn’t happy all the time or looked like I had my shit together, that I was a loser and I wasn’t shit.

Although I thank 2019 for being able to get out of that phase alive and well and being able to make me stronger and wiser as 2020 me, I still have to be honest about her and call her out on her bullshit. I apologize if I gave off this feeling that I was so put together, that possibly you looked up to me as inspiration for your own directions in life, or not – I apologize mostly to myself for being the way I was and being okay about lying to myself for so long.

As time went on and I continued writing for Overexposed, I started to see the true meaning of this series for me. I started to be honest in ways I never thought I would ever be. I admitted my sexuality changing, I spoke about my decision of sexual abstinence, and even when I started to admit to myself that I was bullshitting my happiness.

I wanted this series to showcase more than just my online persona. I wanted this series to let you guys know that I have ugly moments, that I have my toxicity to work on, and that I’m not always the right, nice, and kind person 24/7. I wanted this series to show others (especially writers) that you fucking write because it’s your voice, so be fucking honest with the words you write down in your blogs, journals, stories, whatever. 

Most importantly, I wanted this series to let the judgmental voice in my head that I’m in control, and even if it wants to tell me that I’m this and I’m that, I’m speaking it out already to the universe and I will not be ashamed of what comes out.

2019 Me would never.

So for those who’ve read some of this series’ chapter throughout the year, thank you. They are some of my proudest pieces on the blog, and they continue to help me with my self-love journey that is honestly never-ending. There’s no ending to self-love, and that’s why this series lives on.

This is a passion project that will grow with me.

I feared that I was a part of the small percentage of people that would never change.

I felt like everything that I did, no matter how much older and mature I got within my years, I always had the habits and traits that deemed me an unchangeable person. I could even take all the right turns to make the outcome different and prove the change within me, but nope – it would always come back to its roots. 

Maybe that thought process was the result of having someone in my life for a very long time point out the fact that my patterns, no matter how different they were, were always the same. They had me figured out every single time, and for a while, I thought their judgment on me was right.

Hi, my name is Liz, and it’s taking me a long time to realize that I am a chang(ed/ing) person.

If there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that I’m not the same person I was when I was a teenager. I am not my eighteen, I am not my twenty-one, and I’m not even my twenty-five. Hell, I’m not even the twenty-six I was a couple of months ago. I’m not the teenage girl that got in between people’s relationships and kissed two different people in one day. I am not the 21-year-old that was losing herself all in her family drama. I’m not the 25-year-old that was just getting out of her decade-long relationship. I am also not the 26-year-old that I was a couple of months ago. It’s not not I’m not staying true to myself, it’s the fact that we are constantly changing, and if it’s done properly, it’s typically for the better.

For years, I felt like I had to prove myself to people on the fact that I was a changed person. It made me adapt to this idea that who I was was a villian, that she was this horrible person that deserves the world to just shit on her. Because of my past mistakes, I I felt like I was never allowed to outgrow that part of my life; I was constantly reminded that because of those actions of my past, they would always affect parts of my present and future, which I look back now and wish I was able to tell myself that was simply not true.

The dumb things I did at eighteen just happened; I was just a dumb, young, and naive person and my actions reflected off of that. Who didn’t do dumb shit in their teenage years? Better then than later in life, right? The things that I did when I was eighteen were not the same things that I did when I was in my early 20’s; sure I was still young and had some growing up to do, but at that point in life, I knew better and had a better sense of my morals. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that the beauty of changing coincides with the beauty of maturing. We change because we grow up.

Being 26, I never got the chance to allow myself to accept the fact that I grew up, I changed, and that it was okay that it was happening to me. Last year, it was okay that I grew out of the things and people that made me happy, it was okay that I wanted to start a new chapter in my life; it honestly just meant that I was changing, and a lot of that changing had to do with my soul.

My soul, despite me being ready or not, wanted me to recognize that I was a changed and changing person. I wasn’t the teenage girl anymore that tolerated a lot of things before. I wasn’t the shy, quiet girl in her early 20’s that had severe social anxiety. I was a person who was growing into her own, and learning about herself through the process. With therapy, a little bit of self-awareness, and just the uncontrollable change happening in my life, my changing was unavoidable. It was happening whether I wanted it to or not.

Even knowing that the person I am now wasn’t who and what I was in the past, I till had this inevitable fear that I will always be the bad things I hoped would change. That I was always going to sell myself short and find the love and support from people who will always put me second. I always feared that deep down within me, I was never a changed person, just someone who was good at hiding it.

Life tested me earlier this year when I met this guy while I was working at my job at the bookstore. This guy is one of our regulars; he would come in almost every day during his lunch break and we would engage in small talk. He had a good energy and vibe about him that I really liked, and for awhile I had a little crush on him. After putting my big girl pants on and gave him my Instagram to follow, we started to communicate on there. So whatever, I’m all giddy and I’m flirting like crazy, until he mentions that he has a serious girlfriend. Sure, that sucked for a quick moment, and in the back of my mind, I thought about the times I intervened in other people’s relationships despite knowing they were in them when I was younger. For a slight moment, I thought about that part of my life; I thought “how the hell am I supposed to be friends with a guy that I’m really into that’s in a relationship without being too flirty or open?” At first, that transition was hard. I found myself sharing a lot about myself and being flirty when I knew it was wrong, and it wasn’t until I reflected back on what I was doing that made me realize I was more than this. I deserved to be someone’s first. I deserved my own special kind of love. My self-worth is a lot more visible than it was when I was younger.

That’s when I knew I was a chang(ed/ing) person.

This guy and I are now really good friends. We have a shit ton in common and he’s someone I really enjoy talking about music with, passion projects, and just philosophical things about life. As time passed on, I now see him as a friend; it’s strange because I feared that my demiromantic side would fall for him once I got to know him better, but honestly I value the platonic aspect of our friendship. We support each other, we root for each other in our own individual crafts, and just have a normal ass friendship. I was able to change the narrative of a story that went down the same path one too many times. I was able to have control of my actions and do the right thing, in all honesty. It’s so easy to go back into old habits that were not healthy; the real challenge is to stop yourself from slipping into that old habit again.

I know it seems like it’s common sense, but doing something like that truly let me know that I’m capable of changing and being a changed person. I am able to recognize a pattern or behavior that I’m familiar with and just now know better. Doing what I did in this situation also helped me put some of my worries away; I will not let what happened 8 years ago come back around and happen again, because I grew up, and I am a changed person.

So here’s to always evolving in life. Here’s to looking back and see the changes you made in your life to make it better and to live it healthier. Here’s to the fact that it’s okay to always be constantly changing; as long as you remain true to who you are, that’s all that matters.

What remains true to me will always be the reason why I am forever changing.

I always challenge myself, possibly because I never think the work I do is enough for my satisfaction or because I know that I can do whatever I put myself through.

When I was a college student pursuing a BA degree, a Master’s degree seemed to be out of the equation. I wanted to further my studies, but I didn’t know if I ever would take that step towards going to graduate school. When I got accepted into the MA program within my college, I felt like it was meant to be; I was meant to go forward and continue my studies and get the MA degree that I always spoke about getting.

In 2016, I started grad school. In 2018, I finished and got my MA degree. I should feel accomplished. I should feel like I conquered the one thing that I wanted to do within my studies. I should feel like I’m qualified enough, that I know enough, that what I have and learned is enough to succeed within the field I want to be in.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I’m going through a hard, long conversation with myself about getting a Ph.D. in Rhetoric & Composition.

I’m fucking crazy, just say it. 

While in grad school, I told myself that I was going to move to get my Ph.D. after my Master’s, but with the exhaustion and poor mental health I experienced because of grad school, it told me otherwise. My Master’s was enough, and the experience I had as a grad student is something I will always feel good about because I did it, but I gained much more than just a new, shiny, degree. I gained a passion.

My mentor, Ro, and I have been working on writing a journal article this last month. It has been a project we discussed doing ever since I was a Teacher’s Assistant for her graduate class, and with the current COVID-19 circumstances, we decided to use this time to write and get something published. During the time I’m writing this, we are in the final stages of our official draft before we submit it to the journal we’ve been thinking of submitting it to! I don’t know if it was because we had all the time in the world to write this, but it took us literally a week to complete a full first rough draft, and for me – it was rewarding. Not only will the context of my thesis will be published in an actual academic journal, but this is ultimately the path I want to take in life! I want to be a part of the conversations happening in this field.

But, I still feel like I don’t belong.

I feel like my voice and my ideas are still so underdeveloped and immature; I still remain hopeful in a field that hasn’t really changed since it started. Sure, the ideas and the philosophies in this field have become more progressive and modern to fit its time, but it’s one thing to talk about it and then be about it, as Asao Inoue discussed in his CCCC 2019 Keynote Speech. In a field with so many voices speaking at once, I wonder where mine would even fit in. Is my register loud enough to be heard? Am I just living in a fantasy world where I fit in this field? I don’t know.

To some degree, I explained this to Ro during our phone conversation discussing about our article. One thing Ro does best is always reminds me that my voice matters, and my ideas are just as important as anyone else’s. Particularly in this article, she went on to say that my section of the article brings life to it because I’m new, I’m fresh, and I have something to say as someone who is new in this field. Ro is my mentor for a reason; she embodies where I want to be in my life career wise. Being as young as she is and as accomplished as she is, it’s definitely inspirational to see someone as successful and so driven in this field. Plus, she’s just an awesome person in general, and I’m grateful for her presence and professional guidance in my life.

It’s interesting (and motivational) to hear that I’m considered a new, fresh face in this community of writing studies. It surely doesn’t feel it, and I feel like I have a lot more reading and research to do on my side of things, but just hearing that to some degree, with some expertise, I know what this field of study is. Still, I’m not satisfied with what I know. I want to know more. I want to do more. I want to be more.

Pursing a PhD isn’t just something to take lightly, so I’m not writing this and applying for PhD programs as we speak. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about further down the road or when I feel like I’m ready. Maybe I’ll never be ready, maybe I’ll be ready sooner than later; who knows. If there’s anything that being in this space during quarantine has taught me, it’s that once my time at the bookstore is over (not anytime soon, but also I don’t plan to stay there forever), I know where my next step in my career is going.

Maybe I am enough. Maybe my Masters degree is enough to pursue a career in this field (or just a field where I’m helping college students… even teaching may be down the line), but maybe my voice and passion and drive to be in this field is enough.

Maybe me, in its purest form, is enough, despite how much I say I’m not.