1) You need compassion for yourself, especially the parts about you that you hate, or dislike, or find annoying, or you'll never feel whole, and that's just a fact.
2)  You need boundaries in emotion, even with the people you love the absolute most. You have to be okay with them not being okay sometimes.
3) We all should have a calm place in our minds.
4) Also, a box for us to store our sad and scary thoughts, that we will promise ourselves we will come back to later, but don't need to feel right in that moment.

\ I'll add more as they come along

Self care looks a lot like getting dressed even if nobody will notice the difference
like taking up extra space
Like marveling at your hands for all they’ve held, for how they get red and stiff in January air

Crooked frame on a white wall
with its squared edge on all four sides
sagging to its left, lifting it right up
exposing its crookedness for all to see

Crooked frame on a white wall
why wasn't you adjusted?
wasn't your crooked stand exposed to every foreign eye?
or was your content so beautiful
that it captured the stare of all who glanced?

If so, it must have been content of pure gold
to have kept hungry eyes blindfold

You shouldn’t settle for someone
who is not even worth a single try.
You really deserve more than better
and please don’t believe it’s a lie.

You shouldn’t settle for someone
who treats you like a second choice.
You really deserve more than better
if you would hear your inner voice.

You shouldn’t settle for someone
who won’t catch you when you’d fall.
You really deserve more than better
cause’ remember you’ve had it all.

-Paras Bajaj #PoetrybyParas
Instagram : @mr.parasbajaj

Last year I was a flower
That the sun never quite reached
I was overgrown with weeds
Never growing to my full potential

This year i’ll be a flower garden
full bloom, basking in the sun
I’ll cut down the weeds around me
Surround myself with other flowers
We’ll make each other beautiful

This year will be happy because I said so
I won’t allow myself to be pushed
Into the shadows
I’ll fight for the sunlight I deserve
And with it I will bloom
Over and over again,
I will bloom

let the tears i have shed
water the flowers by my feet
i have stepped on my own growth
for far too long
that i have been content
in hiding beneath the ground

let me fall to my knees
and break my bones
i have learned to piece myself together
again and again
after believing i'd remain shattered
for lifetimes on end

let the pain in my body
mark all the ways by which
i have tried to destroy myself
the bruises have left and gone
and yet i am still here
winning against myself

let me feel alive despite it all
because if you told me
when i was younger
that things will get better
i would never have believed
so let me stay a little while

i want to be here for me

I used to think that all I wanted
was someone to love me,
someone to give me all their
warmth and trust and sympathy.
The more I sit here in this
empty room beside a window,
the more I realize that that
kind of life ain't meant for me.

I'm making friends with all the
shadows climbing on my rooftop,
and I hear music in the leaves
that rustle in the wind.
And I dont need no pity, girl,
I kinda like the struggle.
Like feeling 'round for the doorknob
when the lights are dimmed.

Each day someone will call and
offer me a new solution,
and while I do respect the
depths of their true concern,
they have to realize solitude
and silence both are virtues -
but that's a lesson that I
hope they never need to learn.

"And I hate it when you overeact, you'll go with your stupid poetry ****"

There, you pushed the red button which send me right off the cliff
Freefalling from my only sanity

How do you expect me to react to your most destroying words, should I shut all my nerves and be your punching bag?

And why do you mind my stupid poetry **** if they speak nothing about you?
Well I guess the shoe fits you perfectly
And you feel attacked
And you don't like being cornered
So you lift up your gun
So that my head will end up below your knees
And if saying sorry means decreasing the air in my lungs
I'd be dead long time ago

Being sorry for not doing things in your prefered way
Being sorry for not saying yes to whatever you request
Being sorry to make you feel bad
Being sorry to ******* FEEL

You won the war,
And I'm the one living with fresh open wounds for years

you seem to think that mountains were put on this earth,
to stop my bones from reaching the peak,
because you'd know i'd never climb them,
you knew my soul was a universe and everything around it suffered the wrath of gravity,
that no matter what i'd always be pulled back down,
like the tears of the sky,
like an apple dangling from a tree branch engulfed in the autumn air,
eventually they're bound to fall.
the thing about the rain is that it has to sacrifice falling,
so light can seep through the sky's flesh,
and it does not accept it's defeat after it has trickled into the veins of this earth,
it rushes through it like blood vigorously pumping
in the hearts of passionate lovers making churches out of each other's bodies for the first time.
and the fruit of the earth becomes embedded in the grass,
and makes love with the sky's tears,
so someday the stars can look back and realize their sadness was worth it because the trees stand with the spines of soldiers,
and bear fruit that cause our tongues to make numbness an urban legend.
there is nothing weak about falling,
it is the test of life's resilience,
may the puddles in the sidewalks of this earth always remind you that even the sky cries too,
and may your tongue's ****** from the flesh of this earth's fruit always remind you of the beauty in falling,