Bad days will pass; the sadness will go away. Good days will pass; happiness doesn't last forever. Nothing does.
2. Not everything is worth your time or energy or brain space. Sometimes you need to just let things go.
3. You're not alone. You never were. You are surrounded by people that care about you, and if you don't think so, look closer.
4. Mental health and physical health come before grades and school, always. You need to take care of yourself.
5. The most self-destructive thing you can do would be to place all your love and happiness into someone else's hands, without leaving any for yourself. People are fluid. They change, and one day you might find that they left all your love to wither and die out on the street, with no regard for your feelings.
6. The hardest thing to do is to love yourself. But the hardest thing and the right thing are usually the same.
7. You never actually wanted to die. You just wanted to start living.
8. It's okay to cry. Contrary to popular belief, crying doesn't mean you're weak. It means you're human.
9. Life is way too short for you to spend it surrounded by people that don't care, or people that make you feel ******. Be with people that fill you with positivity and light; people that are willing to stay up until two in the morning with you because your mind is a mess and you don't trust yourself to be left alone. Be with people that love you with every fiber of their being, and that you love even more than that.
10. You need to remember that once upon a time you were a little child, wide-eyed and curious about the world. You didn't lash out at people, you didn't harm yourself on purpose, you didn't starve yourself just so you could be lovely. And some nights, if your entire mind is attacking every single thing that you've ever done, it helps to pretend that you're that little kid again, because how could you possibly hate the three year old version of yourself? You can't. But you're still that three year old version of yourself. And that five year old version, and that nine year old version, and that eleven year old version, somewhere deep down. And if you can't find one single thing to love about your current self, that's okay. Find something to love about any of the other versions. Anything.
11. The coldest, cruelest people were once as warm and welcoming as the sun. So the next time you’re walking around and you decide that the world is an awful place, look closer. See the people around you as they are when they’re with the person they love. See them as they are when their eyes are lit up and they’re talking or thinking about something that they’re really passionate about. Look past the walls that they’ve built around themselves. The world is not an awful place full of broken people. The world is a beautiful place full of fragile precious people that are lost and wandering but still hopeful. If you look around and see misery, look around again and see what’s hidden behind the misery.
12. You're only here on this Earth for a short period of time. You're born, you go through life, then you die. You were blessed with a little bit of the galaxy in your body and stardust in your veins. So make the most out of every single moment that passes by, because you might not wake up tomorrow.
It amazes me how much I've grown and changed as a person since my last birthday, so I decided to make a list of everything I've learned.
