Topic Tuesdays: Random

What Life is Like Living in Brooklyn’s “Chinatown”.

liz

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

First and foremost, I would like to wish a Happy Chinese New Year to those who celebrate it! This year is the year of the pig, so if you’ve seen any fashion related things regarding pigs within the last couple of weeks, now you know why. 

Of course, Chinese New Year isn’t as widely celebrated as the “westernized” New Year, which happens every January 1st. Although it is now more widely known and respected nowadays (I mean, when I was in public school, it wasn’t considered a holiday that schools would close for), Chinese New Year is a pretty big deal in my neighborhood because it is a predominantly Asian community.

I live in what people consider the “Chinatown” of Brooklyn; living in the middle of such a cultural neighborhood has its pros and cons, and to the people who don’t live in the neighborhood would most likely see it for its cons. Yes, it’s overly populated, yes there’s more hair salons than supermarkets, and yes, if you aren’t of Asian descent, the elderly will look at you like you have fifteen eyes on your face. 

But for a person who’s lived in the neighborhood for 19 years of their life, you see both the good and bad of the neighborhood. Yeah, the buses and streets are crazy crowded and the fish markets in the middle of the streets make more people stop in the middle of them and cause a traffic jam. Yes, sometimes the language barrier is a challenge when asking for help at a Chinese-owned store. Yes, it seems like no matter what to do in the neighborhood, you have to schedule it beforehand before things get too hectic and crazy. But, that’s just the NYC life, and I’ve learned that you can’t control your neighborhood from changing, and you can’t control the people that share it with you. So, if the population is what concerns you about Brooklyn’s Chinatown, then maybe this really isn’t the place for you. But, you’re missing out on a lot. 

You are missing out on some of the best dumplings made, and I mean best. I know people from different areas of Brooklyn specifically traveling here to pick up a thing of dumplings. You can’t just eat one, you just can’t eat four, you have to eat all of them your order. You’re missing out on all the little Chinese-owned stores that sell some of the best international snacks that you can’t really find for cheap in grocery stores. Every time my mother and I would do laundry, we would stop at one of the shops next door and buy all of the great snacks we were introduced to while living in this neighborhood. You’re also missing out on some great Chinese food made by some of the sweetest people in the world, and you’re missing out on some of the friendliest people who get to know you every time you enter their stores. 

With the Hispanic community bordering Brooklyn’s Chinatown, you exit one heritage to enter another, and even with gentrification on the rise, this is still one of the most diverse neighborhoods you could possibly visit in Brooklyn. Of course, it’s not perfect, and it’s sometimes frustrating to travel around the neighborhood by transportation, and there’s a lot more garbage than there has to be on the streets every single night, but even in a neighborhood where I should feel like it’s not my own; I feel like I’m at home.

So, Chinese New Year is a pretty big deal for me even if I don’t celebrate it. But to see the red and gold envelopes being sold at dollar stores with sparklers for celebration and light lanterns being in every store possible, you see just how major it is for my neighborhood. The stores are abandoned like it was Christmas Day, the streets are closed off for the Chinese New Year Parade, and the dragon, oh man that dragon visits every storefront for the next 8 days. 

So once again: Happy Chinese New Year! I’m grateful to be living in a community that is able to get together and still celebrate a tradition and holiday that means a lot to them. I enjoy seeing the confetti after the parade the day after, the stringers that get caught in the phone/cable wires outside, and I just love to see everyone in a neighborhood halt their lives for a day to come together and celebrate. That’s a neighborhood I like to be a part of.

 

-Liz. (:

Self-Appreciation Saturdays

SAS: Let’s Talk About Assertiveness. (2/2/19)

liz

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Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

If I were to have any “new years resolutions” for this year, one would be that I will definitely practice more forms of assertiveness in my life. If you’ve been a long-time reader of the blog, you would be familiar with my internal struggle of defending myself and seeing more self-worth in myself when it comes to being in social situations. In simpler words, I have a hard time not allowing people to treat me in a certain way without sticking up for myself. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m some pushover, it just means that I avoid situations where I allow people to dictate my life for me or take my kindness and generosity for granted. I thought I had to be more selfish with myself, and for the most part, it worked; I had a better understanding of what I wanted, who I was, and if you didn’t fall under those circumstances or related to those things, you were automatically cut out of my life. As I got older, I realized how unfair and one-sided that was towards the people in my life who necessarily weren’t “on my level” due to their own struggles and triggers, and in the end, I lost a lot of people in my life because of it. I shared that before therapy, I didn’t know that the type of change I needed in my personality and attitude was assertiveness, and honestly, that’s all that’s been on my mind since. 

In the past, I’ve always been one extreme or another; I was either way too passive and let others make decisions for me without knowing what it was that I needed, or I was too aggressive which was when I lost friends along the way. I’ve also been passive-aggressive, which in a sense, which was just a confusing combination of both, which at the end, it would leave me feeling uneasy. In between these extremes is the act of assertiveness, which in my own journey of enforcing it: it’s not the easiest thing to get down packed.

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Assertiveness takes a lot of practice simply because it requires you to swallow your pride in situations where you know you’re in the wrong but also have it handy when you’re standing for what you know is right in those same situations. It’s difficult, especially if you are also a person who tends to think about other people’s feelings a lot more than yours at times. We are taught at a young age to be respectful to other people’s thoughts and opinions without ever getting taught that it’s also extremely healthy and normal to think about yourself at the same time. No, you aren’t “a bitch” when expressing yourself and your thoughts on topics and disagreeing with others, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re “nice” when you agree with people as well. Assertiveness allows people to be understanding, yet confident enough about the things they want, need, and who they are as individuals in society. It also allows people to weigh in on debates with an unbiased opinion: instead of saying, “they don’t know what they are talking about and they really should just shut up because they sound so stupid”, you say, “I may not completely understand what it is that they believe about this, but I will respect it and they will respect my thoughts on it as well.”

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Of course, saying that you want to be more assertive with others is a lot easier said than done. You’re going to get into disagreements and angry and upset and all that “meeting in the middle” stuff you’re learning to do is going to fly right out the window, especially when you’re in the process of becoming more assertive. You will become passive when all you want to do is just stop arguing, and you will become aggressive when you feel like you aren’t being heard. It takes a lot of willpower to bring yourself back and remember what it truly means to practice assertiveness. Assertiveness is not being mean and one-sided, it’s about being understanding of the other person yet knowing that what you need and what you want is just as important as theirs. I know sometimes when I get heated in a conversation when I don’t feel like I’m being heard well enough, I know I have to take some take away from the situation and really think over what it is that the other person wants, what I want, and how we can come out of it on the same page with the same level of respect.

And learning that comes with practice. Don’t avoid confrontations and arguments and disagreements. Don’t just bottle it up because you’re afraid of the worst-case scenario. You are allowed to be heard, you are allowed to express what you need and what you want, and you are allowed understandings and respect.

You’re allowed to be straight-forward with yourself because no one is going to be straight-forward with you if you are not doing it yourself. And that’s the true tea.

-Liz. (:

Topic Tuesdays: Raw & Personal

The Time(s) I Were Born Again: A Story.

liz

2013.

Driving in the backseat of my grandfather’s truck with my family in Pennsylvania, I remember the windows blowing in the warm, summer breeze throughout my short, ombre hair. It felt nice. Something about the Pennsylvania trees in the summer was soothing this time around; possibly because it wasn’t the noisy city back home, full of the demons that I carried on my back for the last two years. The grass felt different on my feet, the sun felt comforting on my skin, and the wind: it was quiet. I wonder how am I still here after all this time finding my depression from high-school and my first-year of college? I wonder how I wasn’t dead yet after everything that has happened to me. Just a couple of days before my trip, I had experienced one of the scariest nights of my life: a close friend was contemplating suicide and had left me a goodbye text. I think about it, and I know I did the right thing, despite what that friend had said. That night was the last straw of many things: I was tired of holding on to toxicity that allowed me to feel the way that I did. I questioned if something was wrong with me. Did I need to see a therapist? did I have Borderline Personality Disorder? Was I really this lousy person that my friend made me feel? I was tired of living my life like I had to owe something to someone, and I was tired of allowing others to dictate my happiness and my worth.

Something changed me during my time in Pennsylvania that weekend. I was happy. I was smiling. I felt present for once in a really long time. And I came back to reality that Monday morning when coming back to the city. I knew I couldn’t ignore the thoughts and demons I was returning to, and because of that – I set up one last meeting with this friend. It was our goodbye: bye from my life, bye from controlling me, and bye from everything else I should’ve let go a long time ago. I saw this friend walk away that one night, and I felt free. I felt born again.

2016.

I stared at the four dollar box of hair dye sitting on my kitchen table, and then looked at myself in the mirror I had in front of me. Was I doing the right thing? I brushed my ombre hair and remembered just how long this color has been my sense of identity for the last three years. Black hair meant sad and depression in society’s eyes, and maybe I felt myself going down that path again. Maybe this was just me being sick of looking at the same girl over and over again every morning. But maybe I was sick of my hair as my source of identity after so many years. I mean, I thought about it: I had a really awesome group of college friends, I was graduating college in just a couple of months and for once, I felt extremely happy. So, why was I here with a box of black hair dye if I was actually okay? Because my sense of control still felt like was missing. I still felt scared making decisions for myself. I still felt afraid that if I changed something about myself, it meant that I was changing, and not for the better. But, I was ready for a change: I was ready to try something new. So, I opened that box of hair dye and dyed my hair black. THere’s a reason why I could never go back to anything else. This was me. It complimented me, I looked healthy, I was born again.

2018.

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Something told me to record myself. The last time I recorded myself just talking about how I felt was during 2013 when the videos used to be 10 minutes long of me just ranting because I had no real friend to vent to at the time. This time, I was pretty much on the same boat, or I thought I was. It was a couple of days before Thanksgiving and things on my mind were quiet for once in a really long time. I had made a huge decision in my life that at the time I thought was the right one, but still, I was feeling empty and not completely there. I kept looking at my phone to see if I wanted to do it; if I really wanted to record myself talking. But something told me that I needed to do this, not just for my present self, but for my future self as well. She needed to see for herself that me, as the present, was able to go through something so heartbreaking, and still go through life as it came. I needed to remind myself that everything was going to be alright at the end of the day, and because of that, I recorded my 5-minute video, reminding myself that suicide was never the answer to my problems, that things will get better because bad days are only temporary.

A little after that, I wanted to gain back control of my life by crossing some things off my bucket list: I arranged to take my first solo trip, and I cut my hair into a pixie cut. Despite looking like a new person, I felt like one too. I felt like I was able to forgive myself for the hardships 2018 put me through. I was able to bring more awareness to my mental health, and knowing that it doesn’t define me, but that there will be days where it does consume me. I felt like I was growing into myself more and more each day, and for once in a really one time, I felt excited about where my future is heading. Not scared, not anxious, but excited. I felt free, I felt fresh, I felt born again.

This post was inspired by Tiffany Young’s new song, “Born Again”, which has been speaking to me on a spiritual level lately. 

 

-Liz. (:

Self-Appreciation Saturdays

SAS: We Need to Discuss the Issue of “Toxic Shame.” (1/26/19)

liz

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Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH.

This past Wednesday, I went to my weekly therapy session feeling a bit under the weather mentally. As I shared two weeks ago, I’ve been recognizing my own personal signs of when things are getting mentally bad again. Going to therapy isn’t ever an issue for me; in most cases, it actually makes me feel some clarity about the abstract emotions in my head and it gives me a little boost to try and get through the day as best as possible. This week, in particular, I wasn’t feeling it. I just didn’t feel like sharing the things that were getting me in the mood that I’ve been in, but I still dragged myself out of the house to go to my appointment.

Without realizing it, I put on this façade and declared my mood as, “I’m doing good!”

Good thing my therapist isn’t a bullshitter and saw right through it, so this session became a much more serious one than I expected. 

Without even realizing it, I started to admit that I can’t shake this mechanism of me not showing my feelings or emotions (negative ones, in particular) to the people around me for a numerous of reasons. I tend to feel like the source of my emotions and feelings are stupid and not worthy of being upset over. I tend to feel like a burden to those who are around me if I’m sad and everyone else is content. I tend to feel embarrassed with myself after I try to share that I’m not okay. I tend to judge myself and what it means to be me in this body; in other words, I tend to judge myself for not being the “happy and bubbly” person that people know me as.

That is when it was suggested that I carry a lot of shame on myself. This isn’t the first time my therapist has told me this.

So, it had me thinking. I went home to see if there was such thing as “carrying shame onto yourself” and boy, was I shocked to see it be an actual thing. Ladies and gentlemen, we need to talk about the issue of toxic shame. 

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Toxic shame, in a nutshell, is when you subconsciously hold yourself back from expressing yourself to others, being yourself with others, and feeling the need to fulfill this persona that others (and yourself) portray you as. When you don’t allow yourself to be human, you begin to feel ashamed of yourself for being the way that you are that isn’t the ideal person you want to be in public. In other words, you bully yourself into your own shame.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t leave you being unapologetic about yourself. Instead of embracing who you may be (and that includes the negative, toxic traits you may have as well), you are ashamed of being your authentic self, and most-likely carry a lot of self-judgment and pressure on yourself. This type of shame is usually connected with people who don’t have the greatest self-esteem or great outlook on themselves. Sometimes, you get so used to being this way and living your life the way you do, that sometimes you really don’t know when you’re punishing yourself for being you. That’s a huge deal.

It’s hard these days to see where you belong in this world and what your role is while being on it. Will you be extraordinary and legendary? Will you be great in your field of work? Would you just be another face in the world with the same old routine? Will you lose it? Die young? Become a criminal? It’s so weird to think about, but we honestly don’t know where our lives are heading and that part scares me the most. I believe I was put into this world to tell stories of survival, imagination, and to be a voice for young people who may be too scared to express themselves. In this persona, I forced myself to “always appear fine out in public even when all I wanna do is crawl back into bed and cry my eyes out on bad, depressed days”. I also forced myself to care about other feelings more than I should, even though I allow the struggles and business of other people’s feelings to impact my mood and day because “I’m an empathetic person”, and most importantly, I punish myself for being sad, depressed, anxious; pretty much anything negative that may reflect this image I have for myself.

Without realizing I was doing this to myself, I’ve been my own worst enemy. I’ve been the one judging myself the hardest, bullying myself for the longest, and keeping myself from growing. I’ve been the one holding me back from my own process. I couldn’t see past the toxic traits and bad habits and unhealthy things I was doing and because of that, I never fully allowed myself to carve away at myself to truly reveal who I really am.

I know there are so many of you guys out there who read this and kept nodding your head, making realizations yourselves. And with this realization, I hope you keep this in mind when you’re feeling yourself masking parts of you that you shouldn’t, or blocking yourself from feeling things that you should be feeling. And understand that a lot of our own personal problems begin with just us: period.

I feel like we need to be talking about toxic shame because we live in such an already artificial world that it’s so hard to see where you belong and how you should be acting. We constantly compare ourselves, we think we aren’t good enough for other people, we believe we have to be a certain way in order to be accepted into society, and we’re constantly struggling to find out who we really are as people in a world that are moving entirely too fast for us to keep up with. We are training our youth they have to be this, that, and the third to be accepted, liked, and praised without ever fully knowing if that’s who they truly are or not. It’s such an important thing to be aware of because toxic shame can lead to dangerous things when unrecognized, and when it gets too severe.

So, a note to you guys and to myself: take it easy, take care of yourself and the body you are living in, and embrace it: you’ve been uniquely designed and you are allowed to show it!

 

-Liz. (:

Topic Tuesdays: Raw & Personal

How I’m Learning to Embrace my Womanhood.

liz

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

Last Tuesday, I published a post talking about how in society, we pressure women in their 20’s and 30’s into motherhood because motherhood supposedly is essential for all women on this planet. Can’t relate, as Jeffree Star once said. 

That post made me think much deeper about my person individual womanhood and what it meant for me to embrace it more now that I’m now entering my years of being a woman rather than just a girl.

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Anyway,  the following night, I had a conversation with my only girl-friend about a very controversial and “taboo” topic: the debate regarding pro-choice and pro-life. While we do share the same views about the topic at hand, it did make me think about my womanhood as a whole and the things I’m embracing about it as I’m getting older. Personally, it’s very refreshing to have girl talk at times because it reminds you that the things you may be struggling with as a woman could be things that other woman can relate to. So, shoutout to my girl, Tori who drew this amazing drawing after our conversation about womanhood Sunday night! 

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Drawing by StrangeBird, aka Tori.

As I’m learning what it means to be a woman in my own personal life, I’ve learned a lot about how I define my own and how to embrace it instead of following what society teaches us to be when we are young girls.

Womanhood is unique and non-traditional in the 21st century.

I truly believe that we are a generation of women who want to be more than housewives and more than just “so-and-so’s wife”. Don’t get me wrong, we still want to be loved by a man/woman and be someone’s significant other in life, but I feel like many women want to be just as successful. We want to work hard, we want to be breadwinners, and we want to be able to have our own names on this earth. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a woman’s womanhood being more traditional, but in this modern-time, each and every woman’s womanhood is completely different and uniquely designed to fit them personally. Some womanhood involves them loving both men and women romantically. Some womanhood involves them being career-driven and successful, and so forth. We want to be recognized as women, not as just another “inferior species” to man.

My womanhood includes me realizing it’s also humanhood.

As a woman, I realized just how beaten down we get when we show emotion or put feeling into something; society thinks we fall under pressure and can’t handle things without becoming emotional about it, that because of our more emotional sides, we can’t do the job of a man, i.e possibly one of hugest reasons why Hillary Clinton– despite her experience– did not win presidency in 2016; society wasn’t ready for a woman in power. In hindsight, we are taught to care for other people’s feelings before our own and to be as “perfect” as possible, especially when it came to dating and being in relationships with people. Personally, it’s been extremely hard to break out this cycle of belief for me, and I tend to forget that WOMEN ARE HUMAN AND ARE ALLOWED TO EXPRESS HOW THEY FEEL AND SHOW EMOTION WITHOUT BEING RIDICULED FOR IT. There are no “angry black women” or “overly dramatic drama queens” or “psycho white/Hispanic girls” when we express our feelings and emotions. We are humans that have emotions. End of story.

My womanhood involves tattoos, piercings, and decisions I make with my body.

This one is something that I’m personally learning to embrace because frankly, I’m tired of feeling ashamed for what I decide to do with my body and how I want to live in it. Once again we are taught at a very young age that we need to be presented a certain way that is appealing to others in society because a woman’s purpose seems to only be mannequins and dolls in a toy store called “the good and pure ones”. So by saying that, when you present yourself being a woman with piercings, scars, tattoos, short hair, even being a fat girl for God’s sake, you’re looked at differently as being “impure” or “ugly” and “not desirable”. I’ve had other women tell me that my nose piercings were “too busy” and “loud” for me, and I’ve had other women look at me and say they felt prettier when I was around because I was the “fat friend” of the group. Yes, even our own kind are feeding into this twisted ideology that we need to look, act, and be a certain way to be accepted into society, and it took me a while to finally say fuck it, I’m getting any piercing, tattoo, and haircut I want, and then going out to lunch afterward to eat anything I want. 

To be honest, it took me cutting my hair into a pixie cut to realize that even with this body and with this hair, I am just as much of a woman who is opposite of me. What I decide to put in my body and place on my body is my decision and my decision only; this body that I live in is going to have the time of its life because I’m choosing to do things that make it happy and make it feel more like me.

At the end of the day, these things may seem like basic “common sense” things, but they do take experience and observation to finally recognize and be accepted to these things that are not taught when we are young girls. More than ever, we are voicing what makes us women of the modern-day time. We are speaking up to the issues and injustice of how we are treated, how we are viewed as, and how we are supposed to be to be accepted in society when in reality we are progressing!

Embrace who you are, not try to be what you’re “supposed” to be.

 

-Liz. (:

Self-Appreciation Saturdays

SAS: Songs to Help You Out Your Funk! (1/19/19)

liz

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Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

So, you’re going through a rough patch in life. Maybe you just quit your job. Maybe you got out of a relationship recently. Or maybe, you’re just going through a depressive/anxious episode. It happens even to the best of us. Of course, it’s so easy to gravitate towards music that relates to our issues, but who wants to be even sadder when we’re already… sad? In my own personal experience, some of my most helpful times is just listening to some good, uplifting music. So today, I’m here to share some of my personal favorites, as well as the playlist of songs that get me out of my funk!

  • First and foremost, it is important that whatever music it may be, it is uplifting to you. For some, it’s some really amazing lyrics; for me, it’s a beat that I can dance to! One song I gravitate towards when I’m feeling sad is “Africa” by Ninja Sex Party. About a year ago, this song was featured in my music favorites, and to this day it still truly is. The beat is just so catchy, the chorus is so singable, and Dan Avidan highkey has a beautiful voice. Case closed.
  • Another bop for me is an oldie, but definitely a goodie! If you’re in a situation where you feel like you lost yourself along the way, “Return of the Mack” by Mark Morrison will get you back up! If you were a 90’s kid, you’ll be taken back in time. You definitely heard this song on the radio as a kid, you heard it at block parties, you saw people dance to it, and it leaves me feeling like a boss. Like, it’s my comeback, and I’ll be coming back stronger than before!
  • Lastly, we gotta give a shoutout to the girl group of the 90’s: The Spice Girls. Seriously, their discography along is just an all-around feel-good experience! One song in particular, though, always has me feeling strong and worth it at the end of the day: “Do It” by Spice Girls. This song honestly encourages me to be fearless and shows me that I am capable of doing whatever I want despite my anxiety holding me back. This fun, 90’s beat also takes me back to that era (and a lot of this music will: trust me), and the lyrics are just motivational and inspiring. Come on and do it!

As for everything else, here’s my personalized Spotify playlist of these featured songs, as well as some others that I’m sure will help you out of your funk! And if not, don’t worry – make your own!

-Liz. (:

TNTH’s Feeling Good Playlist:

Topic Tuesdays: Raw & Personal

Let’s Stop Pressuring Women Into Motherhood.

liz

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH.

So, I’m now a 25-year-old woman. That’s crazy. I’m in my mid-20’s, which means that people my age are not that young anymore. I mean, sure, we’re still considered young to a person who’s middle-aged, but being in this body of 25 years, we know just how scary it is that we’re halfway to 30. At this age, we pretty much know that it’s about time we start planning what it is that we want and need out of life, and for everyone that answer is different. Some women may want to start a family before 30, some may want to get engaged by 30, some may want to start an empire by the time they are 30. Honestly, the choices are endless. 

But referring back to the “women wanting to have children” aspiration, I’ve made a couple of my own decisions about where I see myself in the rest of my 20’s and going into my 30’s:

I do not want to have children.

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Photo Credit: Metro UK

Continue reading “Let’s Stop Pressuring Women Into Motherhood.” →

Self-Appreciation Saturdays

SAS: Know When it’s Getting Bad Again. (1/12/19)

liz

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Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH.

First and foremost, I hope everyone enjoyed the nine-day blogging spree we went on to ring in TNTH’s second birthday. In all honesty, I never knew just how helpful and amazing writing on a blog would be for my self-discovery, revelations, and on my mental health journey. So for those who tuned in: thank you for doing so!

Speaking about my mental health, it is only right to be transparent on here and to be honest with myself because that’s sorta the whole idea for today’s SAS post.

It’s starting to get bad again.

Continue reading “SAS: Know When it’s Getting Bad Again. (1/12/19)” →

TNTH Related Stuff, TNTH's Anniversary Blogging Celebration

Happy 2nd Birthday, TNTH! 🎂

liz

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Happy Birthday, TNTH! And happy birthday to me as well!

Two years ago, we officially launched TNTH. That’s crazy. A lot has happened in two years: Memes were made, grad school was completed, Donald Trump became our dumbass president… but besides some negatives along the way, a lot of great things have happened, and starting TNTH was one of the greatest decisions I impulsively made at midnight one night.

I didn’t think TNTH would last, to be honest, and I think I mentioned this last year on its one-year anniversary post as well. To be honest, I didn’t have that much faith in myself keeping up with a blog that I only first started to keep me busy during my semester breaks of grad school. But as I started writing and posting and seeing that even a tenth of my content was resonating with some of you guys, I felt like my voice was relatable, and finally heard after not being so for a very long time.

So many great series’ has come out of TNTH: We did “Twelve Days of TNTHmas” for the last two holiday seasons, we daily-blogged the entire month of August and called it “The Blogust Series“, we have kept “Self-Appreciation Saturday” running ever since TNTH’s earliest days, we started to document some travels in “The Travel Diaries“, and we made “A Voiceless Rant” some of the rawest and most personal pieces of writing I’ve ever shared to the world. Of course, some things come and go and some just never came back, but TNTH will always have the same mission that it had even when I first started posting on here.

TNTH, in its simplest form, is just a platform of positivity, good vibes, and honesty. We speak our minds to show others just how empowering and brave it is to share personal stories and struggles to the world. We make sure that nothing is censored or limited to our audience because some of the issues we discuss are some of the issues we need to be speaking publicly about. TNTH, for me, is my voice in its purest form. My writing will always be a good representation of what my voice sounds like, and even though it may not sound so put together in person, I can at least make people listen by reading the words on this blog. My mission for TNTH is to help others discover their voices while I’m still discovering my own as a 25-year-old woman in this world.

And I, for one, will not be silenced.

So, I encourage any of you dwelling on an idea for a project to take action and at least try it out. Try to create something that you can rightfully label as your own. Whether it’s just for hobby interests or if it’s something you want to take professionally, do it. Even if you can’t handle it or don’t have the time required to continue it, at least you can say you tried it out. Let’s start making dreams into actions, shall we?

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So, Happy Birthday, TNTH. Thank you for providing me a safe space where I can be myself without repercussions. Thank you for allowing me to continue being a writer, and thank you for existing! Also, thank you for introducing the small community that is the TNTH community. It rocks!

 

-Liz. (:

TNTH's Anniversary Blogging Celebration, Topic Tuesdays: Raw & Personal

Things I’ve Accepted Halfway Into My Twenties.

liz

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Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH.

It’s crazy that in twelve hours, I am turning 25. It was just not too long ago when I was teasing my partner about the fact he was turning 25 and that he was now a quarter of a century old, and now here I am, eating my own words.

I can’t lie, 25 feels scary to me. Like, the other years were just okay, but for some strange reason, 25 feels like 50; I really feel just how much older I am becoming. Before I know it, these next five years are going to fly by and I’ll be in my friggin’ thirties. I’m not ready.

If there’s anything I can say as I’m reaching this “quarter-life milestone:, it’s that I’ve learned a lot about life and myself while being in my early 20’s. Some of these lessons were taught through older peers, observation, trial and error, and simply experiencing them the hard way.

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Halfway into my twenties, I learned just how much your body is going to change. I’ve been a fat girl for most of my life, really, but it was painful at first to see the images of my 17-year-old body with a thinner face and a smaller stomach. It really took me a while to finally accept that my body is not going to be what it was when I was a teenager. As I’m maturing, my body is too, and for others that could simply mean that they are losing their “baby fat”, while others just gain more weight. But nevertheless, you’re going to gain weight as you get older anyway. I’ve learned to accept my bigger love handles, my semi-double chin, and my wider figure through time. I’ve also accepted the fact that looking through old photos of myself and how I looked before doesn’t determine my “prettiness” now. No, “I used to be pretty” or “wow why am I not this cute now” are not statements you should be telling yourself. I’ve learned to look at those old photos and say, “wow, that was a good time. Yeah, I looked thinner, but I know where I mentally was and what I was going through during that time when I was that age.”

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I also learned just how thick your blinders are as a child when you are around your family. As a child, you believe your family is just this perfect, well-put-together entity that is untouchable and valuable. You think everyone gets along, you think it’s always a good ole happy time when everyone gets together, and you think everyone actually likes each other. But while getting older and going through the various years of my early 20’s, I’ve learned really quick about the individuals you call family. You see that there are inner conflicts between one another, you learn backstories of relatives that you thought were saints, you see your parents past the whole “untouchable superhero” facade and start seeing them as real human beings. You also learn what family members and relatives are just way too toxic for you to keep in your life. As you mature in age, you start learning about the things that families truly hide from young children for the sake of their childhood and happiness, so it’s really concerning and shocking to hear or witness something that makes you think twice about some of your family. Of course, not all of it is negative; personally, my sister and I didn’t get along when we were kids, but as we both got older and more mature, I believe we are the closest we’ve ever been because I got to see her for who she truly is instead of this big sister who was just “mean.” I’ve accepted that in these circumstances, it’s either going to bring you guys closer or drift you away. In my early 20’s, I’ve experienced both.

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Speaking of relationships with other people, I accepted that friendships come and go, and only a few will grow with you. When you’re a teenager, it seems like you have a dozen of friends that you hang out with, go to class with, have lunch with, and everything is great with your social life. But once that phase of your life ends and you start your 20’s, you slowly realize just how different life is. I feel like the media portrays the 20’s at this age of being so damn social that you just have friends on top of friends on top of even more friends. While that sounds like a great time, those situations rarely happen, especially when you live in a city like NYC. Even the friends you kept through childhood will sometimes not last, and I accepted that a long time ago. I’ve accepted that people are in your life for certain parts of it, and sometimes you tend to grow out of them and they grow out of you. Yeah, certain friendships do “last a lifetime”, but I’ve learned through many friendships in my 20’s is that it takes two to tango. It takes both people in the friendship to put in effort and support, and it also takes some growing up to do to understand that adult friendships work so much more different than teenage ones. People have jobs, college class, families — priorities in general that sometimes don’t involve friends at the time being. I’ve accepted that what I put in friendships as a teenager and child isn’t even close to what I should put into adult ones.

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It took me a while to finally accept the fact that I am on my own journey into adulthood and it shouldn’t be compared to anyone else’s that you follow on the internet or anyone you knew back in middle school, high school, college, etc. I’ve mentioned this a couple of times on the blog previously, but it’s so easy to fall into the rabbit hole of scrolling down someone’s social media profile and seeing all of the amazing things they have or are doing. You then start to compare yourself and the path you are on, questioning every little decision you made and wonder why aren’t you doing the same things your peers and old colleagues are doing, and it’s honestly just such a downer on yourself. I’ve accepted that the path that I chose to take is the one I am most comfortable with, and it’s the one that makes me feel less anxious and self-destructive. I know 20-somethings are either living their 20’s to the fullest, but I also know some are settled down with families and spouses. Not every path designed in this world is destined for you, and you have to accept that in order to create your own and stick with one that’s best for you.

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Lastly: one of the most important things that I learned and learned to accept. I’ve learned that even in your 20’s, you don’t have a clear enough grasp of who you are. You don’t really know what you want the most out of life, and yeah we all want happiness and peace and good virtue, but we never really know what we need and what we want out of this world. We don’t have specifics because we are learning to find those things out, and we only find those things through experience, self-discovery, heartbreak, good times, bad times, everything life has to offer. One of the hardest things I had to learn in my early 20’s is that everyone is looking for their purpose in life, and everyone wants their closest people in their lives to fit within that path, not realizing that those same people are looking for their own unique purpose. In other words, I cannot expect my friends (and even loved ones) to fit into my own unique path of life because they are on their own. I was once afraid that I had to leave people behind because I wasn’t living up to their own path and felt like I wasn’t nowhere near them, but life isn’t about trying to fit into someone’s individual path. Everyone’s path is a narrow, one-way street; there’s no sidewalk for you to walk on with them. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can’t support your closest friends or your partner on their journey; you just can’t expect yourself to drop your own dreams and self-discovery to follow theirs. Honestly, that’s the truest shit I’ve learned within these last couple of years in my 20’s.

So, I don’t know what the second half of my 20’s are going to be like. Will I look back at this and still believe in these things? Will they stay the same throughout adulthood? I don’t know, but what I do know is that the person who rang in her 20th birthday back in 2014 isn’t the same one that’s going to be ringing in her 25th tomorrow. And I’m glad that my 20’s are teaching me these type of lessons that I never thought I’d be learning. I mean, I thought I was going to be living on my own at 22 in Los Angeles pursuing my MFA in Screenwriting when I was 19. 

Here’s to my second half of my 20’s! I was not expecting to this so soon!

 

-Liz. (: