Self-Care

I recently posted this picture on social media. I had taken myself out for breakfast on that sunny Sunday in May. The food was amazing and I really enjoyed spending time with myself.
Now, among others, I used the hashtag #self-care for this image. And it was. I had treated myself to good food. But it was more than sitting in a really nice place with really good food and coffee, taking a picture of it and posting it on social media. I actively spent time with myself.

But posting a picture of yummy food and hashtagging it as self-care, well, that’s easy. It’s the glamorous part of self-care. It’s the part where you’re good to yourself (which is very important for sure.) But it’s also the part that is socially and social-media-wise acceptable.
What’s not easy, what’s not glamorous, was the night that preluded this image.
I was sitting in the kitchen, alone, crying for about ten to fifteen minutes. Why, you ask?
Because I had been mean to me the weeks before. I had been unforgiving towards my own flaws, I had been angry at myself for not having been perfect and handling the situations I went through the way I “should” have. I had been expecting myself to not be human and be positive and not make such a fuzz and why the hell are you scared anyway?

All in all, I had been a terrible friend towards myself. And then I got angry at myself for having been angry at myself (which isn’t very helpful, but it goes to show how complex human emotions are). Point is, I sat there in the kitchen and had to acknowledge that I was both the victim and the villain. And that was hard. It hurts, still, thinking that I am my worst enemy sometimes.
But dealing with this, acknowledging it, allowing ALL my feelings to surface – that is also part of self-care. At least for me.
I tend to expect the best behavior when dealing with difficult things. Because I SHOULD know better. And I DO know better. But still, my emotions flood me like a tidal wave, they come crashing in over my head and take me with them. And then, it takes time for me to re-surface. And the more I expect myself to “not make a big deal out of it”, the longer it takes. It takes longer to resurface. It takes longer to be healthy and happy. And when I get caught up in that “you should know better” thing, I am not healthy, I am not well, and worst of all, I waste all that time and energy trying to be someone I am not.

So, in light of an article I recently read (you can find it here), I will try to be better at self-care. And writing these lines, I might actually flood all y’all timelines with images of what self-care ALSO entails.
Because we live in times and a culture where we always show ourselves at our best. And sometimes even that “best” is a lie. Because if even supermodels get photoshopped, where’s the reality?
So how about we all try to be a bit more real and realistic about what self-care actually looks like? Because, as stated in the article, “It’s not all salt-baths and chocolate”, it can be that, too. But it’s also a lot of effort and hard work and tough decisions. But damn, we’re all worth it. 🙂