How to Love Oneself

I get really scared sometimes. I get lonely and sad. I hate looking in a mirror. Even when I'm not having a bad day, even when I don't feel forgotten, I hate looking at myself. I hate the way I look and I cannot fathom how anyone could ever think otherwise. And my inability to see myself as you see me truly upsets me. I wish I could see the beauty in myself. I try so hard to, it's just a bit too hard sometimes. I feel like a burden sometimes and then I look in the mirror and I don't want to be around me. So why would you? Sometimes I wish you'd be a bit more vocal about these kinds of things because as much as I hate to admit it, part of me still needs to hear that you like the way I look or my company or my giggle. I'm really trying to get better, to see myself in a new light. One day I will be fully confident and assured of myself. But right now... I get a little lost. And I'm not entirely sure who I am. I've found myself wishing that I could have seen you last year, when you were a little less developed and a little unsure of yourself. I guess I feel as though everyone knows who they are except me. I'm still trying to feel out the waters. I'm still trying new things and experimenting, and everyone else seems to have already tried everything without me. So yes, I guess I do feel alone. Out of place, always. I feel that I'm behind on these experiences that everyone else has already had. Everyone else has grown up without me. Will I always be a lost boy? I wish I knew who I really was.
Sometimes I wish someone could write a paragraph describing me, faults included. I wish they'd write at the end "you're perfect and I love everything about you." Maybe I need to do that. Because I need to learn how to love me. I need to learn how to not be afraid anymore. I need to learn how to cast away my fears.
I guess it's worth a shot...


My name is Cassandra and I have tears in my eyes as I write this. I've been told that allowing yourself to cry just proves that you're strong. Maybe my tears are something to be proud of. I'm a dreamer. It's funny because... Previously, I always knew I was a dreamer. But somewhere along the past few years, I lost my ability to dream. This is the first time I've admitted that I still can. This is the first time I've admitted that I will always be a wide-eyed little dreamer. And despite however large and rash my dreams may seem, I will reach every single one. I don't give up. No matter how many nights I spend falling apart in my bed, I always manage to get up in the morning. Because I am a dreamer and each day is waking into a bright new dream. These dreams are my lighthearted sighs stolen beneath the moon and the way I tend to find myself captivated by you. I wear my heart on my sleeve. My emotions seem to be much more extreme than my peers. I'm not simply happy or sad, I'm exuberant or depressed. However, this allows me to grasp at life and throw my hands in the air - whether from joy or surrender. I'm a human being and I embrace every emotion. I take deep breaths to clear my head and cry happy tears when I witness other people receiving the things they deserve. I love noticing the breathtaking colors that the universe has given us, or when my gaze falls upward and I take in enormity of this magnificent universe. I get scared, yes. But I face my fears. I face my fears and often in doing so, I find myself. I remember my love of books and words. The fact that I'm always looking a word up in the dictionary or for a story to hear. I find myself in the songs I find escaping my lips on a daily basis. My devotion to celebrating the world through art and words. Sometimes I almost forget my love of children and the way caring for them makes me glow. I always find myself in their bubbly little faces. I find myself in the way time stops with you. The way I want nothing more than to lay with you and feel your essence. The way I all too often pour my soul out to you. Sometimes it's a series of too many text messages, or crying over the tiny things, or asking you to come give me a hug. But at least I'm (apparently) good at communication. And even with tears running down my cheeks, I am beautiful. I have a love of all things in the world, an ability to genuinely try and succeed in finding the magnificence in every situation. I am a fighter and a lover. A protector of everyone I love. A protector of the people that I may not know. Some people have called me selfless, but it's not even that. I'm just being me. I'm being Cassie and trying my hardest to do anything I can to make any other living thing just a little bit happier. Even if it is just for a few moments. And that is truly rare, to make such an effort for such a small feat. I am unique. Maybe even my own work of art, "The dreamer who cries of happiness at other's fortunes," "the green-eyed soul who will do anything to make you smile," "the tiny giant who will create something worth remembering," One day I will change the world. One day, I will inspire another girl, similar to me, to do the same. One day I'll inspire her to not be afraid to dream. I am crying much harder now, but... There's something beautiful about my mind. I'm so scared to like myself. Why?  I am a human being and there is something about the way my eyes light up when I'm happy and my cheeks get sore from smiling and I could float away on a single moment. There's something so special about existence, about my existence. I am unique and unprecedented. And I am beautiful. The gestalt me is beautiful, even on the outside. There's no one else in this world like me. I am perfect as I am. Perfect as Cassandra or Cassie or Cassafrass. Perfect as my being and soul. I am finding myself... And I love myself. I love who I am.


I am trying to learn how to love myself.

Letter

My homework for my Fiction Writing class was to write my professor a letter introducing myself...

Rachel, 

            My name is Cassandra. Most people pronounce it a different way than I do, so I try to understand when I’m called the wrong name. Almost everyone outside of the professional world calls me Cassie, which I find to be lightweight and reflecting of my playful nature. However, as a writer, I prefer Cassandra. I even use the pen name Cassandra Fox (Fox is my grandmother’s maiden name and the fox is my spirit animal). 

            I’m hunched in the dark, losing my mind to the painstakingly mournful music that permeates my room. My purple and yellow socks usually stand full mast at my calves, but have fallen into wrinkled heaps at my ankles. This is me. This is me surrendering to my midnight illness, the plague of this young fox’s mind. Reaching down to grab my bright pink and orange flower cup, I take a long gulp of something other than water. Foxes are known for being cunning, and I have begun to believe that their ability to achieve through deceit is based upon their complete awareness of the world.  

           Sometimes I stare wide-eyed at the world and wonder if it is my awareness that makes me so vulnerable to my mind when I am alone in the inky depths of darkness. 

            The cunning fox will never allow you to know how she feels, so she will hide her vulnerabilities at all costs. However, her awareness of the world means that she is also aware of herself and, because of this, she is aware that hiding her wounds will only make them hurt more. She must first allow them to heal in the forest a breeze. As every fox knows, you can trust no one but yourself. She finds her breath of relief in writing, because she is opening up to a different world, one where open wounds in the forest are not her downfall. Once she worried who might come across the words she so carefully chewed, but the fox realized that with words, all things are possible. 

             With words, the cunning fox stands in a bipedal manner, her two long legs stretching for miles beneath her strong torso. This is her mask. The fox grows from forest floor to busy street, stopping only to run her fingers through her long hair. The red hair and green eyes are all that are left of her past life, but now the cunning fox is free to achieve her desires through deceit. Now she can be vulnerable, because she is being someone else. In the shadows she writes out her worries and pains, waiting till the morning when the sun will shine again. 

            As a fox, she is more than capable of surviving on her own in the wild, but as a human being, there is nothing that hurts her more than being alone with her thoughts at night. And so she writes. 

 Cassandra

I just can't.

I'm trying to take deep breaths but I'm shaking and I'm shaking and I just can't (breathe?). Outstretched hands in front of me, quivering. This is why I hate my name and the price that comes with it. The curse of knowing the future and not being able to stop the cracks in the pavement. Have I ever told you about this? No, of course not. I seem crazy. Hand shaking, skittering. Crazy. My breath shudders because what else is there to do. I am stuck in a loop, taking the first bite of an apple over and over again but never the last licking of lips. Never the satisfaction. It's a sore feeling I get in my kneecaps every time, the memory of sprinting until they knock together and my whole body folding in half. I am nothing more than fabric in the wind, the catching of the sunlight in what is left of your broken glass. There is the cut from the glass from the dream I once had, and you lay among it all, sweet syruped lies dripping from your lips. How many times did you tell me it would all be okay? Could you stop time to stop the itching in my bones? Can we keep the glass from dropping? Because no one should be crying over spilled milk, but here I am ripping my guts out of my stomach to show them to an anonymous source. And I'm pretty sure this nightmare is the worst of all, shadowy hands reaching away from my body, to grab what I can only hope is mine. Something other than my intestines, a noose wrapped softly along my neck taking place of the fingerprints and kisses you once left. You're gone. I've shot up, eclipses instead of eyes, and there are the withered tears again. It's not spilled milk I'm crying over, it's not. I just can't bring myself to breathe, so instead I heave, and cough up the glass I choked down. There is a whisper wrapping around my soul, and I'm praying it crushes me before my vision becomes whole. Maybe I should have gouged my eyes out before the feeling of my heart pounding against my chest stopped me in my tracks. Here I am frozen, watching the same moment over and over again. The pure white snow covering up the pain that your tracks made. The tracks being made again, and the snowflakes falling again, and the dancing and the same moment over and over again. I don't want to watch you leave, but there are your tracks walking away from me. And there is the snow. I don't want you to go.