A Declaration for Self-Affirmation:

I am me.

In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me.

There are persons who have some parts like me, but no one adds up exactly like me. Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone chose it.

I own everything about me-my body, including everything it does; my mind, including all its thoughts and ideas; my eyes, including the images of all they behold; my feelings, whatever they may be – anger, joy, frustration, love, disappointment, excitement; my mouth, and all the words that come out of it, polite, sweet or rough, correct or incorrect; my voice, loud or soft; and all my actions, whether they be to others or to myself.

I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears.

I own all my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.

Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts. I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests.

I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know. But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for the solutions to the puzzles and for ways to find out more about me.

However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is me. This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time.

When I review later how I looked and sounded, what i said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting. I can discard that which is unfitting and keep that which proved fitting, and invent something new for that which I discarded.

I can see, hear, feel, think, say and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me.

I own me, and therefore I can engineer me.

I am me and I am okay.

~Virginia Satir

Source: But I Love Me More (the newest blog I follow)

" I wish that someone, somewhere had explained to me that understanding who I am is a long process and that it’s okay to take the pressure off (figuratively, and sometimes literally) and just enjoy the ride." -- JULIA, on Met Another Frog

La gives herself advice we could all probably stand to follow:

"But I need to keep this in mind. I need to work on this. On being ruled by my strengths and not my weaknesses. On being comfortable admitting that my need for control is just as much an illusion as my thinking I’m in control is. Not making an enemy of my weaknesses, since they are just as much a part of who I am as all the great things. To learn to admire my own flaws as much as I admire the human fallacies of everyone else." --La, of Liquor, Loans, and Love, which vacillates between being some of the funniest shit and some of the most poignant shit I've read in a while.

It's almost my favorite season!

"If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection." -- Mitchell Burgess

I have always loved the Fall. As the summer winds down, it becomes time for back to school shopping: new clothes! (Sweaters, boots, jeans, scarves, hats!) new school supplies! (I got these liquid graphite pencils...writes like a pen, erases like a pencil, but becomes permanent after 24 hours so you could use it on official forms and stuff. THE COOLEST.) Then we actually go back to school, see friends we haven't seen in a while, generally get our normal social lives back. A nerd through and through, I like being intellectually stimulated and having academic work to do, so that too is always a plus for a little while, at least. 

But there's more to it than that. There's something about autumn itself. The world gets cool and crisp and beautiful. Nature shows its true colors. I often find myself bending down to pick up a particularly ravishing leaf before it gets trampled, and I love the satisfying crunch of walking over discarded leaves as well. It all seems so refreshing to me, though I suppose Spring is supposed to inspire that feeling more than Fall. Fall seems to be about cooling off, getting comfortable, snuggling into places to get ready for the Winter. So, in light of the above quote, I want to make sure I'm comfortable with myself this Fall, snuggled into a place I want to be throughout this Winter and the forseeable future.  

"Today, make peace with the past, the things you've been through that have brought you to where you are.  Your face, your body, your posture are all reflections of the life you've lived.  Your resilience is a reflection of your beauty.  Reconsider the things you've associated with beauty in the past.  Renew your self-image. 

Today, stop comparing yourself to others and rejoice in yourself.  Life is heartbreaking to each and every once of us.  Since we never know what the next person is going through, we must remember to always be kind.  First with ourselves, then with our fellow man.  Beauty teaches us to see with our hearts." -- GG of Peace Love and Pretty Things

Advice from Max

"...become a bit of an egomaniac. Just for a little while. Look at yourself in the mirror frequently and often and marvel at how fucking hawt you are. Wear tight clothes that show off your assets and assume that any negative feedback you get is just hating bitches hating. Strut around like your shit don’t stink. Constantly remind yourself how effing awesome you are and don’t let anything that happens convince you otherwise. If a girl looks at you sideways, it’s because she wishes she was you. A man rejects you? Because he’s not man enough to handle you. Just gas yourself up for a little while until you get to a point where your confidence is unshakeable. Because you need that to survive the dating game." -- Max, of max-logic

I think this applies to more than just the dating game--whenever shit is going badly, I just remind myself [okay, okay, with a little help from my friends (and India.Arie)]that I run dis shit, and then I keep it movin. She calls it egomania, Ev'Yan calls it narcissism, I call it loving yourself. Whatever you call it, don't forget to practice it, okay?   

"Living my life like it's golden" and other six-word biographies

An exercise inspired by Miss Jenkins of Rewriting Herstory:

• Loving myself and paying it forward.
• Learning to love me for me.
• Searching for home, enjoying the journey.
• Laughing, loving, losing, lingering, loving still.
• Reaching, dreaming, defining my own success.
• En route to finding my happy.
• Making peace with my own reflection.
• Being open so wide it hurts.
• Being afraid to fall, trying anyway. 

These are fun. Try it!

Allow me to be narcissistic for a moment

Let's begin with an excerpt from one of my favorite blogs, so you can see where I'm heading with this discussion of narcissism:

"I imagine that one who is beautifully Self Centered (or Narcissistic) is…

• Gracefully centered in herself. She knows the inner workings of her being better than anything else on earth. She understands that she & her happiness are her first priorities.
• One that listens to her heart. She only makes decisions that will benefit her contentment & is unapologetic if her choices make others flustered. She realizes that she cannot change others & that it isn’t her duty.
• Completely self loving. She is sensual. She revels in the sight of her naked body. She radiates a kind of eroticism that is subtle & intimate. She seduces herself on a daily basis to celebrate the fondness she has for her being.
• Perfectly self-possessed. She exudes confidence & poise, so much that she practically walks on air. She never lets anyone get in the way of her own convictions. She doesn’t allow any one thing to label her or tell her what she isn’t.

We should all venture on the path to being unapologetically Self Centered & Narcissistic, if only just a little bit. I have a feeling that the moment we do that we will see ourselves in a new light, one that illuminates our entire being authentically & freely." --from Sex, Love[,] & Liberation (I refuse to abandon the Oxford comma.)

So one of the unexpected furnishings of my subletted room in my big empty house in New Brunswick was a full-length mirror, something I'd been woefully missing since an unfortunate incident involving my delusions of being a basketball star and throwing a glass bottle halfway across my dorm room in the direction of my trash can [which my mirror sat behind]. As I expected, however, my room didn't come with a dresser, which means that with the exception of my undies, which reside semi-sketchily in one of these contraptions from B^3, all my clothes are organized in my surprisingly large closet. The mirror is attached to the little bit of wall surrounding the doorway into the closet. This means that I very often find myself standing in front of it more-than-half-naked while I try to figure out what I want to wear for the day. 
At pretty much all times of my life prior to this [with the notable exceptions of the two times in my life I have used a mirror to get a good look at the parts of me that until 3 months ago no other human being had ever seen, once when I was 10 as inspired by a book about puberty my mom bought me and again this February, as inspired by AZ's performance in the Vagina Monologues, about a man who wanted to LOOK at her, which made me want to look at myself...], mirrors have been used primarily for finalizing the look [like, since coming to Princeton, mostly daily makeup-application] or quick-checking the finalized product before walking out the door. A recovering one-piece-bathing-suit-addict, I've never made it a habit to look at myself when I'm not properly covered up. Until now. 
And this morning, like yesterday morning, and a very large number of mornings for the past month, I stood in front of that mirror in shorts and a bra thinking about what shirt I wanted to wear and was interrupted by the passing idea You are so sexy. It wasn't a self-affirmation, not a task I'd set out for myself to do when looking in the mirror in the morning...it traveled through my brain as a simple statement of fact, like It's raining outside. I've realized that this idea has been growing in strength over the past month; it started with something like surprise, like Wow I don't look half-bad. Then it became In fact, I might even look kinda good. Suddenly it wasn't so hard to accept the idea that someone could want me. A couple nights ago when my friend C called me to talk about how I was dealing with the break-up, I didn't even laugh too hard when she said I was too gorgeous for him anyway. It was like somewhere along the way I actually started to believe that I might be objectively attractive in my own way. 
I'm not saying I used to sit around thinking I was the ugliest mothafucka on the planet or anything. But I certainly didn't think that I might, in fact, be hot. [Despite the fact that T says it all the time...she totally wants me ;) ] I'm trying to understand how this happened. 
I guess somewhere around the time when I went natural, I also began to change my style of dress a little bit and not feel like I had to dress up so much for daily life. I wanted to look put-together [it's a thing], yes, but I still wanted to look like me. So I added more t-shirts to my wardrobe along with more dresses. I bought flats and eventually allowed them to replace the heels in my life. I know people say this so much it's becoming a cliche, but going natural really did give me this general aura of confidence, like I wasn't afraid to be me despite because of the fact that I didn't fit the norm. I danced at parties even though I know I'm not good at it, and one or two guys started to dance with me. [This had never happened before.] And while I was perusing the interwebs in search of a Halloween costume last year, I found this and imagined it hugging my curves and WASN'T AFRAID TO FACE THE WORLD IN IT. So I bought it, and I wore it, and I got more compliments that night than ever before on a single day of my life (with the possible exception of graduation). Girls were jealous and WHITE MEN I DIDN'T KNOW danced with me--in other words, the world was crazy. And those reactions prompted me to get a little daring and buy SHORT DRESSES to wear to semi/formals in the spring, because evidently my legs didn't need to be hidden, and again, compliment after compliment. I bought fancy underwear sets and felt like a goddess in them. Dirty little secret time: I posed nude for a friend taking a photography class at Princeton who needed a female model. And even if I don't love how I look in every picture, there are some that are priceless and I love the fact that I did it. From there, I bought a bikini and have worn it to the beach multiple times--WITHOUT GIVING A FUCK THAT MY BODY ISN'T A STICK. I bought shorts that aren't bermudas and thus actually hug the curves of my ass.
What I'm trying to say is I love my body. And not just because of the six pounds I've lost without trying since summer started. And not just because someone else loved my body. He helped in that process, sure, but this came from within me. Haters can hate...today I say, with the promise of again saying tomorrow, that I am gorgeous, honey.  

The following question was inspired by a random wall post from one of my friends to another one of my friends...

Would you date yourself?

It's an interesting question. Really calls on you to do SERIOUS self-assessment, but from an outsider's perspective instead of an insider's one, and from the particular-outside-viewpoint of potential romantic interest. I don't suppose this will be an easy task...

Would I date myself? I'm not sure. I'm a little crazy, but then again, everyone's a little crazy in their own little way, right? I've got big dreams that I will achieve, lest I die trying, but hopefully we've reached an era of life when ambitious guys can handle a lady having some ambitions of her own. I'm not that pretty in a lot of the stereotypical-impossible-airbrushed-dominant-culture kind of ways, but I do my best to work with what I've got and I think it shows. I'm a big girl, but a big guy needs someone who can take it. I'm not the housewife type, but we're talking about just a little dating. I'm a bit clingy, though, which I can see being an issue, but my clinginess is a byproduct of the fact that I give as much of my heart as I can spare to the people who are important to me. I'm kind of an intense person about a LOT of things, but who wants to be a candle when you have the potential to be a bonfire? I love to snuggle and if you don't I don't want you anyway, XD. I'm not very walk-all-over-able, and I will challenge your ideas and want to have intellectual debates but again, if this is a bad thing in your book, keep right on movin. I drink, and I curse, and I sometimes have problems with authority, and I don't "do the whole religion thing"; there are other lifestyles that simply can't get with those qualities, and I respect that--I probably couldn't be with someone who is super-religious, or someone who categorically does not drink or curse, just like I couldn't be with someone who smokes. I'm not a great dancer, but I will get out on the floor and shake somethin, and according to Lee Ann Womack that's what life is all about, right?

But I think I'm approaching this wrong. The question is not would some rando guy date me, it's would I, knowing everything I know about myself, date me? I, knowing how I am when I'm by myself, knowing that I change my mind all the time, knowing the kind of thoughts that run through my head and the way I approach things like friendships and relationships, knowing my every little bad habit and all the things that piss me the fuck off about other people. And I'm...struggling with this. At first, I am inclined to say no, because I don't really like to be alone with myself. I'm working on it, but have not successfully reached comfort in alone time yet. (Unless this counts; blogging might be my only legitimate hobby. Meditation too, kind of. I want to take up yoga once the new semester starts.) But I love the person I am when I'm spending time with the people I love. I'm an extrovert; my energy and happiness and the warmth in my life mostly comes from my relationships, which I put so much of myself into and expect so much from. Knowing everything I know about myself means knowing my goals and aspirations and knowing the person I'm striving to become as well as I know the person I am, right? I would date the person I'm trying to be. I think that means I'd also like to help me get there...     

Habari gani? Kujichagulia!

Habari gani? Kujichagulia! Kujichagulia means self-determination and is the second day of Kwanzaa. On this day, we pledge to define ourselves, to name ourselves, to create for ourselves, and to speak for ourselves, instead of being defined, named by, created for and spoken for by others. On this day we design for ourselves a positive future and then vow to make that prophecy a self-fulfilling one.

Kujichagulia is my favorite day of Kwanzaa. Do you, Kujichagulia says. Be a rebel. Find something--anything--to throw your fist in the air and yell about. Today is the day to say FUCK the establishment, FUCK the status quo, FUCK people who are resistant to change, FUCK anyone who can't appreciate your beauty and your truth.

Africans. Niggers. Negroes. Coloreds. Blacks. African-Americans. Niggas. Persons of the African Diaspora. Multi-generational African-Americans. Self-definition is an interesting concept to me, particularly as it relates to identity markers. Black people in this country have been struggling for centuries to answer these questions: What is blackness? Who gets to define it? Through time it has been the whites, then the upper-middle-class blacks, then the militants...no one's really sure who it is now. There are lots of people who say blackness should be whatever every individual black person wants it to be; but then how do the non-black interpret blackness, and how do we honor yesterday (unity)? I ask the same thing about gender identity, sexual orientation identity, political party identity, class identity, age identity, religious identity...labels in general. I always say I don't like labels. I don't like generalizations. I don't like that if I said I was a feminist, you would have a prescribed notion of what feminists are, a mold you'd try to put me in. I worry about the same things when I say black. When I say female. When I say 20 year old. When I say Princetonian. I WILL NOT BE COOKIE-CUTTERED TO FIT YOUR NOTIONS OF REALITY.

Heh, Kujichagulia is kind of why I started this blog to begin with...

Lauryn Hill I GET OUT MTV Unplugged

I like this as an anthem right now.

My New Motto in Life

What exactly my dear are you clinging to

Some propaganda stating you've gone as far as you're going to?

That your skies are finite and limited

That your growth is an impossible dream

That your future is inhibited

Aw please, they been shoveling them lies since the '50s

Can't nobody decide what your life can move through

This is your time and your challenge--what is it that you want to do?

Sit and be still and not shine the way your light was meant to?

Oh, I pray that ain't true, I pray that ain't true

Aw please, don't fall into the abyss because something negative once ruled you

Please understand I'm from where you are and I've got to fight my demons too

Please don't give up because somebody broke your heart and some things fell through

This is life. You owe it. Life does NOT owe you, okay?

An obstacle is something that impedes or blocks one's way

You can climb over, you can dig under, you can chip through it, you can go around it, you can move it, you can ignore it, but you can DO it

YOU      CAN        DO          IT

-Jill Scott, as seen in this song by Kem:

Facts

So as I've mentioned before, I've been using this dating site, OKCupid, recently. It has led me to realize something that I find very troubling about myself:


I have extreme difficulty answering the following questions:


What are some of my interests?


What do I like to do for fun?


...These are very basic and simple questions. I should immediately be able to come up with answers. I can come up with a few, but they're not very satisfying, even to me.


FACT: This is further proof that I don't do enough things for myself, because I want to and like to, not because they'll look good on my resume or will help a lot of people. 


Fact: This is a problem.


I want to I'm going to do more to fix this...I just don't know how to do that without disappointing a lot of people, myself included. I always thought I just liked being in charge of things, but maybe that's just all I'm used to. I need to get used to something new.