Tag: mental health

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The Poetry Bar

Coffee Date: Equality in parenthood

Guys, I don’t know if this is one of our lovely Coffee Dates or me just having the need to vent about a thing I got randomly triggered by even though it does not really concern me. Let’s begin, shall we?

I was bored and did something I only do when I am bored and that’s scrolling through Facebook. I don’t know why facebook is still a thing but anyways…. An article about a woman who ended up in jail because she didn’t pay alimony was there and I had to be stupid enough to go and read the comments. I don’t know why I do this to myself.

I am going to focus on one thing here, one type of comment under this post. So, if we are mentioning alimony you already know that parents are divorced and the kids went to one of the parents – in this case the father.

The comment that just triggered me (and I will try to translate it the best that I can from Croatian) was: “You know how good of a mother she was if the court gave the kids to the father”. There were several comments of this nature under the post. What the fuck is wrong with our society? We have all of this fucking technology, we came to so many new discoveries, built so much but yet we cannot grow out of this patriarchal view of families and family roles.

Let’s just be clear on one thing – in many countries around the world, when parents get divorced the court and social services are more inclined towards giving the kids to the mother. And that bothers me. So when a mom doesn’t get the kids in the divorce then we question what type of a mother that is but when the father does not get the kids, that’s normal. We set the bar for fatherhood that low we don’t even bother to discuss the biased opinions the judiciary system has about family and parenthood; we do not even consider that both parents should have an equal opportunity to get custody of their kids. And that FUCKING BOTHERS ME!

For people who came to my blog for the first time, just know that this is coming from someone who grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father and still I can be objective enough to expect for fathers to be as good as the “mother” stereotype we uphold.

Parenthood should be equality. Both a mother and a father should be able to raise their kid, put clothes on them, cook a meal for them, study with them, put a roof over their head and they both should be held responsible for their child’s well-being. PERIOD! If one parent does not know how to take care of a child in the absence of the other parent, then that person should not have kids. I am sorry to anyone offended by this, but it’s the truth. A child is a responsibility and if you are not ready for it then don’t have a kid. If you expect your spouse to take care of the baby, then you are not ready for the baby.

I don’t like how we applaud fathers for things that should be expected from them like changing the diapers, for example. When a mom does it, it’s just a random thing but when we see a father who is changing diapers, feeding the kid, waking up in the middle of the night when the baby is crying etc., then we often have the need to tell the wife/mom how lucky she is for having such a good husband. Do you see how messed up that is? I know this is not the rule in general but we see this type of behavior often and it got us to the point where we are fine with the system discriminating against fathers when it comes to giving custody over the kids during a divorce.

If we are going to keep the bar this low for fathers and just expect moms to take care of the kid then we do not have a family with a mother and a father – we have a mother and a sperm donor.

I could make a whole separate post about moms just enabling the fathers to feel comfortable with sitting on that low bar society set for them. Also, I could make a whole post to talk about how this toxic mindset has badly influenced parents and kids living in domestic abuse. I am going to speak from my own experience – on more than one occasion the police and the judges and people in general overlooked all of the circumstances in which my family lived, overlooked how many times we had to call the cops, asked for help around my dad and took him to rehabs because of his alcohol addiction because all that could come out of their mouths was “What type of mother keeps her kids in such danger”. It’s always easier to judge than discuss the system that does not protect people in need, in poverty, victims of abuse etc. But that’s a topic for another day.

I am not a mom and maybe this is not a topic I should discuss, but this is my opinion and I am sticking by it. Feel free to let me know what you think about this in the comments down below!

This is off-topic, I would just like to thank you for being around and for showing me a lot of love on my last Coffee Date where I opened up about my struggle with my mental health in the last few weeks. Knowing I still have a safe space here is amazing and makes me feel good. I am currently in the process of getting myself out of this mess and getting better. I hope I will be able to make more posts for you soon and film some YouTube videos (already brainstorming some ideas) because straying away from writing and content creating always puts me in a bad state. Thank you all again, you are amazing, all 6.900+ of you <3

Let me know if there’s a topic you would like to discuss in out next Coffee Date and let me know if you have some video ideas for me – all suggestions are welcome!

Sending love and positive vibes!

Luna

Latest Poem: Poem #349
Youtube videos: Luna’s channel
Latest Coffee Date: The art of getting comfortable
Latest #savingme: Give Women Their Rage Back

Categories
Coffee Date

Coffee Date: The art of getting comfortable

This is not easy to write, not just because it’s hard for me to discuss but because it has been so long since I’ve written anything that I don’t know how to do it well. Let’s just let the stream of thoughts flow.

After the last earthquake in Croatia, I took some time off. It was right before New Years and I just wanted to have some time for myself and away from my job and blog and everything. Just me. It turned into a disaster.

My mind does not like to be left without a hobby because then I spiral into negativity and episodes of sadness, fear, anxiety and all things that make me want to lock the door and never leave the room. Working from home certainly made this easy for me – too easy.

The first red flag that I was not doing well came with a sudden craving for smoking. I broke the habit over a year ago and was not planning on sinking into my nicotine addiction no matter how bad the cravings got. Smoking was an addiction but it was also a way for me to push down negative feelings. Something in my cup, music in the background and a cloud of smoke around me.

Instead of screaming that I am not doing well and seeking help, I started to close up. I got new addictions that helped me push the feelings down even for a short while – beer and binge eating. A few pounds are already visible, but I pretend they are not there.

“Why are you this unhappy?”, I asked myself one day. In an attempt to try and make myself feel better I started thinking about everything I had – a family, a good relationship, a good job etc., and the more I listed everything I got, the more I felt ungrateful and started telling myself that my own negative feelings were invalid and that I need to be happy because I do not have a lot to be unhappy about.

In the past, these feelings meant that there was something wrong in terms of me not seeking out to find what inspires me, to strive for more. These feelings were there to yell at me that I’ve gotten too comfortable and that I need to start moving forward. They would force me to move forward before they ate me up alive. I completely disregarded this now. I knew this when I was 15 and full of life but the 24 and tired version of me wanted to turn a blind eye and become even more comfortable.

And so January flew by with me waking up, working, eating, watching Netflix and being socially anxious about going outside while telling myself I am not socially anxious and that it was just the time we live in when people don’t want to be around other people. A month of getting extremely comfortable with all those negative feelings still floating around. A month of telling myself I do not deserve to feel bad because I have what I need to survive. Not live. Survive.

My quarantine-born Netflix addiction would lead me to different shows and whenever there was a scene that was sad or tears-of-joy happy, I would have to try really hard not to cry. It was not the scenes, it was something inside of me that had to be cried out but I did not let it. I would get in bed after a long, hot shower – the same bed I spent the whole day working and watching Netflix in – and I would pray for sleep to come before my brain had time to overthink this mess I was making of myself.

I stopped writing because the 24 and tired version of me knew that writing would get the demons out and it would make me move, kick me right out of this comfort zone.

And so February came. I looked at what I had done to my blog, looked at all of the filming equipment I got for youtube because I was excited to make videos and I just kept on getting comfortable. I will get to it eventually. I will get around my dreams and goals right after this “me time” that has done nothing but made me unhealthy, mentally unstable, overly emotional and a complete mess overall. Isn’t “me time” supposed to make you feel better?

So here I am, doing what I’ve done countless times before. Writing all of this out in hopes it will provide some much-needed clarity, peace and healing. Am I scared that I went in too deep into the comfort that it will take me months to recover and get back to myself? Yes.

But I have to force myself to not get scared by that feeling. I have to force myself to face it, conquer it and remind myself of who I am, what I came here to do and convince myself that I am not this tired, comfortable and unhappy person I tried so hard to be. There’s more, there will always be more and I have the right to go after it, whatever it takes.

Latest Poem: Poem #348
Youtube videos: Luna’s channel
Latest Coffee Date: Flowers in the Garden 
Latest #savingme: Give Women Their Rage Back

Categories
My life

I am doing better

Good morning and happy Monday!

I am doing better. Thank you all for the support and for the kind comments and messages after my complete meltdown. It really meant a lot to me. The past week has been scary for me because I don’t know how to manage my head and my thoughts sometimes and my mind takes over and I spiral. There were some pretty dark moments, but your girl is doing better. I have three days more of work and then I have some time off which will be useful to me to celebrate the holidays as best as I can in these circumstances and to recharge my batteries.  

I am trying to enter this week and I will try to enter 2021 with a positive attitude because shit already hit the fan this year and I’ve proven to myself I have the capacity to deal with this. Minor issues such as my meltdown are a part of the process for me and I am glad that I am once more showing myself I have the strength to pull myself up and that I am not letting anxiety and negativity to eat me up alive.  

This has been challenging for everyone and the holidays will be challenging as well because this is when loneliness and sadness about not being able to see our family will creep up. I know that people refer to this as a “new normal” and I refuse to use that term. This is something we need to survive and then we can go back to normal. I think that our normal will be more appreciated after this fiasco of a year and that all of us should gain more respect for other people and for nature. If we don’t learn something from 2020, I don’t know what to think. 

I would also like to let you know that the camera equipment I bought has been put to use! I can’t wait to start posting on Youtube, very excited about this. I love having a project, something to focus my mind on.  

Anyways that’s it from me today. I hope you are all doing well, thank you for being so supportive. 

Let me know, what have you been up to this weekend, how was your week and all of that fun stuff! 

Sending love and positive vibes,
Luna 

Latest Poem: Poem #346
Youtube videos: Luna’s channel
Latest Coffee Date: Flowers in the Garden 
Latest #savingme: Give Women Their Rage Back

Categories
My life

Being on the edge

So I am still in the mood I was when I last posted a life update. Actually, I am not. I am doing much worse. Do you know what a terrible feeling it is when you can feel your mental health deteriorating?  

I have been doing okay this year, considering how it could have been. One of the reasons for that is that I stopped watching and reading the news IN MAY! This was the only way I could go through this year without losing my fucking mind. I could write an essay about all of the mental health issues I have that stem from my childhood and growing up in domestic abuse and how that is causing issues for me in this pandemic, but we don’t have all day. 

My mother went to visit my grandparents for the first time since the shit hit the fan this year. My grandparents are very old and very ill and we are all aware of the fact that they do not have the health to survive COVID if they catch it. They actually do not have much left and that’s the difficult truth we have been facing as a family and it is hard. I haven’t seen them since December, 2019 because I was scared of bringing COVID to them so I didn’t visit at all this year and I have to live with the fact that there’s a big chance I might never see them again because well… My mom had to tiptoe around the details of her visit to them because she knows how emotional I get and she knows I do not have the mental stability to deal with the thought of losing anyone I am close to but I felt everything I didn’t want to feel in her voice.  

I am very emotional, very unstable, very much on the edge. I managed to avoid this happening to me for months but this pandemic caught up with my ass and its playing with my head. I constantly have dreams about my family getting COVID, about my mother being in the hospital. I literally bury my family in my dreams. I had issues with sleeping since I was a little girl and I have very vivid dreams. I feel my dreams as if they are an actual reality. This month, one night I had this horrible dream and I felt as if someone was holding my shoulders and shaking me violently. The next night I called my boyfriend to come and sleep at my place because I was fucking scared of closing my eyes. That is how real my dreams get for me. Let’s not even start with the dreams I have involving my father and his abuse. And now, my dreams are influenced by a disease that could kill people that I love.  

 I have been waking up for the last week absolutely exhausted, scared, depressed and angry and I am having a really hard time dealing with my own head and all of these negative feelings. The problem is that I don’t have peace in my sleep and I don’t have peace when I am up. My mind is in a state of constant anxiety. I went through these phases before, I know how bad it gets and I am just hoping I will get home to my mother in time because I feel better when I am around her.  

Today for lunch I actually made pancakes the way my grandmother used to make them for me when I was a kid because I thought it would make me feel better. It actually made me cry. I plan on getting a bit tipsy tonight all by my fucking self. Maybe I manage to have a good night sleep if I am a bit under the influence.  

Venting here makes me feel better because I have a hard time talking about this to anyone. And if anyone who knows me reads this and asks me about it, I will successfully avoid the topic because I am good at that and I don’t know how to explain all of this well. My mind just plays a very cruel game on me.  

I also like venting here because I feel that there are a lot of people who go through this and are scared to say it out loud or they think they are alone or are ashamed of struggling with such issues. Well you are not alone. I am very calm, collected, productive and have my shit together. But today, I almost overslept my shift and I work from home, I cried because of pancakes, its 3PM and I still didn’t wash my face and I plan on getting tipsy tonight all by my damn self. Also, today I deadass went to pick up a package from the courier in my pajama without a bra on and without having washed my face prior.  It’s okay to struggle, feel like shit and there’s no shame in it.  

And today was supposed to be a good day for me. My camera equipment came (the mentioned situation with the courier) and I was excited about starting to film vlogs for my YT channel and creating better content and I was looking forward to it so much and now I don’t know if I will have the strength to get out of bed tomorrow and do anything mildly productive. And I am learning how to be okay with that and how to be okay with being in bed in a pandemic where the world is yelling at me that I need to use this time locked up to grow and learn a new fucking skill. Here I am learning how to not be okay and be okay with that.  

This post was a fucking mess because this is what my brain is right now. I don’t know if I say this enough, but thank you all for being here. 

The sun will shine again and I will find a way to control my mind again. And so will you.  

Latest Poem: Poem #346
Youtube videos: Luna’s channel
Latest Coffee Date: Flowers in the Garden 
Latest #savingme: Give Women Their Rage Back

Categories
Coffee Date

Coffee Date with Luna: Flowers in the Garden

Hello everyone and welcome to another Coffee Date with Luna! 

We have not had a little chat for a long time now. How are you all doing? 

There was one of my posts called Embrace your Insecurities where I discussed my insecurities and body image issues with all of you and today I want to discuss the thing that has an impact on our insecurities which is the Instagram girl. 

For all of you that are on Instagram or are familiar with it, you already saw in your mind a certain picture of a girl when you read the words Instagram girl. It’s the perfect, polished girl with big boobs, small waist, huge ass, tiny legs, Kylie Jenner lips and perfect hair. And girls like that exist in real life, but these that we see on social media, for the most part, only exist on social media and no one would recognize them in real life. I know there’s an equivalent for this girl in the male world and I suppose it’s the rich guy who drives a fancy car and has a 6pack. Correct me if I am wrong.  

I am not going to discuss in depth the impact this has on men’s and women’s body issues and eating disorders but I just want to talk about the fact that we are trying to destroy the most natural thing we have in the world and that’s diversity. Why is everyone trying to look the same? 

Have you ever come across a person that has made an impact on the world and read something along the lines of “s(he) looked, talked, walked and thought just like everyone else”? The answer to that is no because trying to be a clone of pop culture is suffocating your creativity and bringing desperation to your life. 

There is so much beauty in diversity but we are trying our best to pretend it’s not there or we have just become blind to it from years of following imposed beauty standards. Everyone can agree that nature is beautiful, but it’s beautiful because of its diversity, colors etc. If every flower was trying to look like the other flower, we would have one flower and our garden would look boring. Why are we trying to look boring?! 

I understand that people go under the knife or have cosmetic procedures done because they are insecure. I thought about stuff like that and stuff I would like to change but then I stop and ask myself – Is it worth it? Maybe in a few years, I will change my mind about this but for now, my 24 years old brain is getting really tired of this clone culture that social media created. 

When I filmed my first Youtube video I noticed that my face was very asymmetrical but I thought it was because I was filming on my phone. Then I filmed my second Youtube video with my new camera and realized that my face indeed is asymmetrical. I was trying to determine if it was the lightning, the angle or something that made my face look like that and then I realized that in reality one of my eyes is a bit bigger than the order, one side of my lips is plumper than the other and one part of my jaw was a bit “chubbier” than the other. And that’s fucking okay. Instead of believing what social media is telling me I need to look like, I will rather listen to science that has confirmed human bodies are asymmetrical and that’s perfectly fine and NATURAL. 

With the world we live in, it’s very hard to just love yourself and be there for yourself when the media is trying to tell you that you look/sound/talk the wrong way and that you are eating the wrong things and that your body is not the way it should be. Even if some find it superficial, having an honest talk about body insecurities and how social media exacerbated them is necessary. I don’t want to dive into these types of topics because I didn’t research them yet, but with the development of social media, there was a rise in suicide and more teens were entering different mental health institutions. Is this what we want?  

Embracing yourself and the way you are different, gives your body, face and soul the dignity and respect the world has been trying to take away from it. Let’s just find the beauty in diversity again and go back to nature from which we came and to which we belong. Remember: no flower is the same in the garden. 

Sending love and positive vibes,
Luna 

Last Coffee Date: Recognize your patterns
Youtube videos: Luna’s channel
Latest Poem: Poem #343

Categories
The Poetry Bar

Coffee Date with Luna: Addicted to the Noise

Hello everyone!

I rose from the dead, here I am actually blogging on my own blog. My last few weeks have been quite interesting and when I say interesting, I mean numbingly painful but I am still working through that bullshit. When I say that I rose from the dead I mean it.

Forgot to say, welcome to another Coffee Date with Luna. Depending on when I actually publish this, might be time for warm milk before bedtime with Luna, but that’s beside the point.

Growing up in domestic violence (what a lovely way to start a blog post), you cannot function in silence or in a lot of noise which is more common for such environment. When there was noise, when we were fighting or my father was chasing us around the house trying to beat us, I heard something and I knew that everyone was alive and conscious if they were speaking. Silence would sometimes be comforting, especially on those rare night when I wouldn’t go to bed listening to my father’s drunk rants about how he’s going to burn the house down while we sleep in it. But there’s this other thing that you start fearing about silence and it’s silence itself. I would often catch myself enjoying some moments of peace and quiet to only then be awaken by the thought that someone is hurt or that my father randomly fell somewhere while he was drunk and broke his neck. Yes people, welcome to my childhood thoughts. Don’t worry, he is still alive and back then he was mostly sleeping on the couch or the floor because he was too drunk to make it to bed.

This fear of silence made me into a person that constantly has to have noises around me. While I was living alone in Zadar, I always had music playing in the background or the TV was on. If I was going to the store, I had my headphones in. I had a playlist for bedtime. Music would be playing while I would get ready in the morning or while I was under the shower. And this routine continued.

Do you know what this does to you? It takes away your time to self-reflect and think about your problems and fears by constantly distracting your brain. I do not know how to be in silence or allow my brain to just process situations. I let everything build up inside of me until I become so emotionally unstable that I get depressed. And you want to know something? YOU ALL FUCKING DO IT AS WELL.

We live in a climate where we are encouraged to constantly be distracted by all types of shit. Our phones are always buzzing with notifications, there’s always someone talking, there’s always a new show to watch, news to keep up with etc. We all suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out). We are so caught up in this era of smart devices and constant noises that we forget about the whole world that’s inside each and every one of us.

I finished reading G. Steinem’s book called Revolution from Within. There’s a part where she speaks about people being healed emotionally and physically by coming back to nature. Do you know what nature is? Quiet. When was the last time when I enjoyed spending time in nature? When I was a kid, I used to run around and climb trees because being on a high tree with the fear of falling and breaking something was safer than being inside my house. Ever since I was liberated from domestic abuse, I gravitated towards the city, the noise, the constant distractions. The only thing that changes this for me is the proximity of the sea. I have a very special bond with the sea but I don’t spend much time on the seaside.

What I’ve come to realize lately, as I’ve been spending more time at home with my mom, is that this running away from my childhood and my inner self has produced a very negative side effect. I lost my memory or suppressed it so hard that I cannot remember years and years of my life. If something were to happen to my mother (God forbid), I would lose years of my life because she is literally the only person that can tell me what happened at certain points. I just don’t remember but that’s a problem for another post. I am researching this issue currently.

This is what being addicted to distractions and to noise brought me. I forgot who I was, do not like to think about who I am or what I wish to be. In this world of noises, I think it’s time for me to put the volume down and go back to me, listen to what I have to say and go through the pain and the thoughts and the memories for as long as it takes to process everything.

In a world that doesn’t want us to think, it’s hard to take that step. It’s not a step out of a comfort zone. It’s more like a jump of a cliff but we have to see it as a leap of faith, a return to the natural, to the human, to the raw part of life that was here before the noise and before devices that became smarter than us.

There is catharsis to be found in books, art, music and creation but there’s truth to be found in the world that’s inside of us. We came to the world naked, screaming and without shame. Let’s not leave it hidden, silenced and manipulated.

Sending love and positive vibes,

Luna

 

Categories
Coffee Date

Coffee Date with Luna: Recognize Your Patterns

Hello everyone and welcome to another Coffee Date with Luna!

Ever since I dropped out of grad school, I have been experiencing a sort of a life crisis. Sometimes it’s okay, sometimes it hits me like a wave and I am a terrible swimmer. One of the things I have learned in this time is that the only way to grow and get the fuck out of this is to review my past actions, what decisions led up to this and how to take accountability for my actions and make better choices in the future. Trust me, I do not have this figured out yet, but baby steps are still steps forward.

One of the decisions I had to review is the type of people I let into my life, especially when it came to romantic relationships. Using the word romantic linked to the toxic relationships I actually had is very amusing to me. I had the attachments, the infatuations, the beliefs I found love and that love will conquer all and now I am here 24 years old and still do not know shit about love. But I do love to write about it.

When I look back and review my relationships, there are patterns I can recognize. I would either get into a relationship that would seem great but it would end abruptly because something was missing, I didn’t feel like the person I was with had any genuine feelings about me, like they didn’t care about me. The second pattern is rushing into relationships that I knew deep down would never work and then being crushed. As if I was looking for this amazing love that would survive the obstacles and thrive. And people, I thrived in one of those relationships that ended up with me crying and smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day. It wasn’t just the relationship that was toxic. The consequences echoed in my life for years and when I look back, I cannot help but ask myself: Why do I hate myself so much?

I refuse to take all of the blame for my failed relationships, but I can recognize where I went wrong. I didn’t leave people because they didn’t love me the way I need to be loved, but because I didn’t love myself. I projected my problems and my insecurities on to them. I wanted them to give me the love and attention I never gave myself. I was looking for someone who would care about me because I didn’t care about myself.

I started relationships and became infatuated with men who were bad for me because I didn’t feel like I was worthy or love. I humiliated myself to the point where I accepted crumbs off someone’s table and called it love. This is getting very hard to write but it’s something I have to face in order to be better and do better for myself.

I decided to share with you my relationship issues because you have these patterns too and maybe they just came into your mind. Writing them down, acknowledging these patterns will not solve them but it’s a start of a very long and prosperous journey. You cannot solve your problems in one night, in one post, in facing the truth but you can solve them with consistent work and by being honest with yourself always.

It’s hard. It’s fucking hard. It took me 3 weeks to sit down and write this because it’s not easy to admit that I hurt myself with my past relationships just because I didn’t love myself enough to seek what I deserve, what we all deserve which is love and respect and happiness. Do I love myself now? No. It’s a process but I won’t speed it up by not doing anything about it so, as always, I am sharing my truth here. I hope my little encounter with honesty will help you in your journey.

This is all I can take for this post, it’s hard to write about this when I don’t have my feelings sorted out but I am working on it. This is one of those baby steps.

As always let me know in the comments below your thoughts, what would you want to read about next and let me know how are you doing?

I love you all!

Sending love and positive vibes,

Luna

 

Categories
Coffee Date

Coffee Date with Luna: 20 something crisis

Hello Everyone! 

It has been a long time since I just posted on the blog, had a talk with you or in this case, a cup of coffee. There is a reason for that. I have been going through a bit of a crisis that I do not know how to explain to myself or to others. 

I have a good job which keeps me financially stable, recently I met someone very special in my life, since I started working from home I have had more time to spend with my family, I have great friends and the list could go on about the things that are really going for me right now and still I am so miserable. There is a constant feeling of something missing in my life and it’s eating me away.  

I know that my career choices have a lot to do with my unhappiness. My goal in life was not and is not to be a customer service agent. I do like this job and I absolutely adore the people I am working with but there is still that feeling that something is missing. I have been in this career crisis on and off for the past 2 years and it’s a normal thing every 20something goes through but I can feel my mental health going to hell fast because I cannot cope with not having a purpose in life. Being aware of the fact that my degree is worthless and that no one wants to hire me in digital marketing because I have no fucking experience is not making this easy on me.  

Yesterday was my one year anniversary of working as a customer service agent. I have been feeling like shit for the last two weeks because I knew that I was reaching that one year at a job that was supposed to be temporary until I get my Digital Marketing certificate so that I can do something I am 100% invested in. But again there is this fear – what if I get into a Digital marketing agency and realize after some time that it’s not what I actually want? What if I just got that certificate to cover up for the fact that I dropped out of grad school without a fucking plan? 

As you can see, I am struggling which is why I haven’t been so active on the blog. I have had problems opening up to people about this because they either do not understand completely what I am saying or hit me with “Do you know how many people lost their job during quarantine and how many people are being paid less because of the COVID situation and how lucky you are right now?”  

Yes, I do know. 

I haven’t been fired, my job was never in question and there were no paycheck cuts in my firm. The only difference for us was that we had to work from home. That is it. Not a single person in the customer care center where I work felt the effects of quarantine when it comes to job security and money and this is amazing and I applaud the company for that.  

I don’t know if I am able to put this nicely, but I do not know how to feel okay and satisfied with my life just because others have it worse. Other people being in bad situations shouldn’t be a standard for me to feel good about myself and about my life but I have often felt under attack if I expressed any of these opinions out loud which made the struggle in my head even worse because it is all in my head. 

And then I opened up my laptop today and decided to write this mess out because this is my safe place and I often stray away from it when I’m in trouble but I am glad to be back. Thank you for putting up with my annoying rant about unhappiness. I know that our Coffee Dates are usually reserved for happy thoughts but I just had to get this off my chest. 

Please do let me know if you experienced similar issues and how did you deal with them? Let’s be the supportive WordPress community that we are.  

Also, we already passed 5,5k followers here on WordPress, my Poetry Bar inbox is full of your submissions so let me know if there’s any type of different content you would like to see on this blog. I publish from 3-5 Poetry Bar works daily, do you want more? Would you like for me to write about the current events, maybe to do story times, do you have some questions for me so we can do a Q&A type post. Tell me all of your wishes down in the comments because, honestly, I need some content ideas and working on this blog has always helped me work through my personal issues.  

I love you all, thank you for being so amazing and so supportive! 

Sending love and positive vibes,
Luna 

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Coffee Date

Coffee Date With Luna: Body Insecurities

Hello everyone and welcome to another Coffee Date with Luna! 

I am keeping the theme consistent with the last one and the theme is insecurities. In the last Coffee Date with Luna I decided to open up a bit about my skin and hair insecurities because insecurities are something many of us struggle with.  

One of the top insecurities people face with is linked to their body weight and body shape. We are terrorized by unrealistic beauty standards and it is in the human nature (unfortunately) to compare ourselves to those images, especially in the social media era.   

I am not a doctor, psychologist or any type of expert in the field so I will not be touching the subject of anorexia, mental health issues and obesity since I do not think other than experts should comment on this because people spread a lot of false information and negativity when they talk about things they are not educated on. 

I actually want to talk about my own insecurities about my body, weight, body shape. I struggled with it a lot. I was never overweight and, to be honest, I was underweight as a child because I had some eating issues which followed me up to puberty where I started gaining weight and my body got a certain shape. 

The thing that helped me through these insecurities was – love. It became my answer to everything and in this story it has two sides. 

With extra pounds, my insecurities started to pile on while I was in high school. I would often feel bad about not being thin, I would go on extreme diets and workout plans and developed a binge eating problem. I started to read a lot of books during high school, some of them were self help books, and without noticing the image I had about myself started to change when I got in touch with the concept of self-love. To be honest, I am still getting in touch with this concept every single day of my life. I am still struggling but I came to a point where I would never deprive my body of food or put myself on extreme workout plans I was too weak or unskilled to follow. Working out is great but going to an extreme can cause serious injuries, I should now.  

Self-love isn’t something you wake up with or can keep without making an effort. Self-love is about creating a relationship with yourself and we all know that relationships can be hard. You will have to work on it every single day. Self-love, bodywise, means choosing a healthy lifestyle instead of an extreme diet. It means loving yourself enough to feed your body with good food while not depriving it of some sweet cravings every now and then. You can work out to get abs while loving the chubby stomach you have now. This is a process and it doesn’t happen overnight.  

When you try to change your body while being fueled with hate or insecurities regarding your appearance, it will backfire on your mental health.  

As I got older, I actually became conscious of my body image issues when I started getting into my first serious relationships. My body insecurities messed with my mind and it affected my relationships because I was not comfortable with the idea of someone’s hands on me. That insecurity was not only toxic to me, but to the person I was with as well. During that time, I had accepted my body shape and implemented self-love into my life but I was just starting to realize that it wasn’t the reflection in the mirror I only had a problem with. My insecure mind created this image of how a person, in this case a boyfriend, will see me and my body and it scared me because that image was not very nice in my head.  

This is where the other side of love came to my rescue. A person I wrote many poems about, realized I would become very distant and would “wiggle” out of his hands very fast even when he wanted to only hug me. He actually realized my insecurities, and I will get really real with you now, when he noticed I would get anxious when my bra would be off. I was also insecure about being as flat as a board while everything else about me was chubby and round. I did not enjoy him putting his hand around me because I didn’t want him to feel I don’t have a flat stomach. He would sometimes lift me up while hugging me and I hated it because I thought I was too heavy for him to hold in the air. He felt those insecurities. 

He actually taught me that love will not see that what I see in the mirror. It took some time but he showed to me that love doesn’t judge and doesn’t walk around ready to measure me. Being with the wrong person, a person who judges you and tries to aggressively change you, will only feed into your insecurities. This is a good way of knowing is your relationship toxic or not. I think it is good, actually necessary, for the person who loves you to warn you about unhealthy habits etc., but actually criticizing someone and making them feel bad about themselves is toxic.  

To quote him: To my eyes you are perfect because I see more than your looks. I love every inch of you and that includes more than just skin and a body.  

At the end of the day, love is the answer to everything including our insecurities. You need to learn to love yourself and let others love you as well. Don’t tell yourself that no one will love you the way you are because there’s someone better. To the right person you are the best and you have to be the best for yourself.  

It’s all about love. 

Sending love and positive vibes,
Luna 

 

Categories
Coffee Date

Coffee Date with Luna: Embrace your insecurities

Hello everyone and welcome to another Coffee Date with Luna! 

Today I would like to talk about insecurities, especially related to looks, because I have some and so do you. I honestly do not wish this episode of Coffee Date to be labeled as a girly episode because I think it’s discriminatory and feeds into the “macho man” narrative where men cannot have insecurities and talk openly about them because they have to “man up”. If you believe any of that stereotype nonsense, this is not the blog for you.  

Mostly, when someone brings up insecurities people first think about a few pounds they would like to lose. I had insecurities tied to my weight and body shape for a long time and it took a lot of work to get rid of them completely. I can say that today, with my 23 years, I feel very comfortable with my few extra pounds, not so defined curves and over all I just feel very comfortable in my body. If you’d like me to do a separate post about body insecurities and how I coped with them, do tell me in the comments. 

My biggest insecurities begin from the shoulders up – my face and my hair. When I say my face, I am not saying I think I am ugly. I am actually referring to my skin and my acne problem. It all started a few years back while I was at university. I have problems with my thyroid and the issues escalated one summer to the points where I started taking medication for it. My hormones were all over the place. This caused the outbreak of hormonal acne and I lost more that 20% of my hair.  

I used to have volume in my hair and it was slightly wavy because I actually had curly hair as a little girl. In one summer I lost all of that. My hair became lifeless, flat and it gets greasy in a matter of hours after washing. When I would dry it and run my hand through it, I would end up with a fistful of hair. I actually cried a few times while drying my hair because it was just hard to watch my hair fall out so aggressively. Doctors weren’t helping at all.  

And then the acne came. Doctors weren’t helping at all still. I understand it’s hard to fight such issues but I felt so awful and angry at my doctors. I gave up makeup for a solid year and a half. To this day I still refuse to wear makeup on a daily basis and put it on only for special purposes or nights out and that is hard. These acnes break out on my chin mostly, they are very red or white and my face gets very red and has that greasy shine. It is not comfortable to walk around like that especially not in a world that glorifies perfection and we live under the false social media standard of beauty. They are not around all the time, that’s the thing with hormonal acne – they break out during different parts of the month. It is a very disgusting feeling to wake up in the morning with a painful face. These acne actually hurt.  

Some of you follow me on Instagram @luna.theblog and are probably thinking that I am making this up. I am not, but on my IG pics I am mostly wearing makeup and you can’t really see my face. There are some pics, better said selfies, where if you zoom in you can see the imperfections under my foundation. My insecurities are very much visible in the fact that I never posted a makeup-less picture to my social media. That’s how much I do not like looking at my face skin. I do not photoshop my photos but I do wear makeup while taking them.  

I was told many times that I am so confident because I don’t put makeup on when going to work or grabbing a cup of coffee with friends etc. I am not confident but I do not speak loudly about it because I am scared of people then paying too much attention to my face skin. The rational part of my brain know that this wouldn’t happen. People are not standing around me judging my lifeless hair and hormonal acne and the rational part of me knows this but this is the thing about insecurities. They mess with the rational part of our brain.  

This is why you need to talk about them at least with yourself or on a blog like, well, me. Rationalize with yourself and do what’s best for you. I don’t wear makeup because it makes my skin worse and it took a lot of rationalizing to come to the point where I feel comfortable being makeup free on the daily. You have to learn how to put your own well-being ahead of people’s opinion and that voice that whispers in your ear. Giving up and giving in to your insecurities can harm your mental health and you could literally harm yourself because mostly our insecurities are about our body and the way we look. If you feed into your insecurities you will consider yourself not good enough, not lovable and people and companies who know how to manipulate your insecurities to their advantage will use them against you. I feel like I am building a conspiracy theory, but I believe you know what I am talking about. Expensive beauty procedures, strict diets, depression… The list goes on and it’s terrifyingly long (like this post) 

If you are insecure about your body or something else, it’s okay to try and change it but don’t forget to love it in the process. You can accept and love yourself while trying to change yourself.  

I could literally write on and on about this issue but I think it’s time to stop. If you would like to read more about this topic, just leave it in the comments below and also feel free to share your ideas for other Coffee Date posts. Don’t forget to let me know in the comments what do you think about this post, how do you handle your insecurities and how have you been lately. 

Sending love and positive vibes,
Luna