"Live for yourself. Love those around you - but realise they have their own agendas."
– Alex Gaskarth (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

(via 4788)


“Is it ever OK to feel sorry for yourself?”

bella-illusione:

Adulting: You can always feel it. You usually shouldn’t act on it.

Self-pity isn’t really a thought, it’s an emotion. And while life would be a lot simpler if we could just elect not to have a given feeling, emotions just sort of are. They are mental weather. Some are better; some are worse, but they’re all temporary and you’d usually do well to put on a scarf if it’s cold out.

But there’s a difference between feeling sad/bad/mad and feeling self-pity. Self-pity implies that you don’t deserve whatever is happening to you … which, of course, you probably don’t.

The things that make us really sad are not usually consequences of things we’ve done. The passage of time, desire for a life that is outside one’s ability to obtain, unrequited love — these things happen to all of us, and none of us “deserve” them. In this way, feeling self-pity about a given situation is not a lot more meaningful than feeling angry that you can’t breathe underwater. It would be so fucking great if we could! But we can’t.

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"The shock of the twenties is how narrow that window of experience really is, and how inevitable it seems both at the time and afterward. At some point, it is late, too late, and you are standing on the sidewalk outside somewhere very loud. A wind is blowing. It’s the same cool, restless late-night breeze that blew on trampled nineteen-twenties lawns, dazed sixties streets, and anywhere young people gather. Nearby, someone who doesn’t smoke is smoking. An attractive stranger with a lightning laugh jaywalks between cars with a friend, making eye contact before scurrying inside. You’re far from home. It’s quiet. All at once, you have a thrilling sense of nowness, of the sheer potential of a verdant night with all these unmet people in it. For a long time after that, you think you’ll never lose this life, those dreams. But that was, as they say, then."