Self-Care is Worthiness to Love Thyself

We are programmed to receive

I followed orders most of my adult life. I was a very obedient sailor with little deficiencies because my perfectionist was required for my mission. I kept telling myself that this needed to be real, that I could not give up because this job gives my life meaning.

My soul's purpose. I performed flawless reactor startups, shutdowns, testing, and operations at age 22. That came with a cost to my introvert shell, my proneness to anxiety attacks, and it really avalanched any little sprouts of my true self from ever emerging. My heart and mind were only focussed on being the best reactor operator that I could possibly be so that my ship could do its job.

So I became a robot that smiled too much.

We haven't had that spirit here since 1969

I would greet and smile everyone on my ship because we were a submarine of 150 men. When the hatches shut, and the ballast tanks are filling up and suddenly we're a drowning boat, the only life that exists at that point is ours. We are cogs in a gear that must really know each other because when the shit hits the fan, I need to be sure that the person next to me knows how to don an EAB and respond to casualties that could save us all from a very wet introduction to death.

And still those voices are calling from far away

Even after years of leaving the boat, I'm still waking up in the middle of the night. Responding to reactor casualties, flooding, fire, missile launch procedures. I'm still rattled by the amount of knowledge that I needed to have but still haven't reached my peak. I'm still suffering from this gigantic wave of stress that comes and goes whenever it wants.

The emptiness is a struggle that we all share.

We keep protecting ourselves with you'll never understand what I went through.
We would rather suffer in our own way, in our own space, and look at the world through a looking glass because this feels safe, like me and my green plush blanket with a rhino face hoodie.

How did I soften my construct?

Being weak doesn't mean you whine about yourself

Being weak means facing what is strong and ultimately admitting defeat. Doing it often changes your programming. Being weak and strong are both transients in a learning process. Once I adopted this idea to confront my fear of people by talking to people, weakness grew into strength.

My silly accent didn't offend anyone, or maybe they just kept it to themselves.

I'm so lucky to have an Asian face. I faced no shame in Asia for changing my accent into other-than-American. I think language naturally adjusts with who is part of your current everyday life. I spent time with lots of Germans, and so I would start to change my accent. When I was in Hawaii, I would do the same and my English swayed to Hawaiian twang. I didn't really care, because I was alone and the world became my playground.

My short term friends became the closest human beings to my heart

I haven't talked about my mental health with anyone besides my therapist. My friends and family weren't very supportive of a poisonous frog I was. I just wanted to be coddled and I wasn't trying to start something for myself.

The beautiful thing about being strangers is you be encouraged, and it'll feel like the most important words you'll hear from the universe because there are no biases tied to their words.

You are what you say you are

If you keep telling yourself that you're a lazy, disorganized, pathless ghost, you will be a master of this persona in 10,000 hours. If you tell that to 10,000 people face-to-face, you'll find it that this changes the course of your thinking. Because now you'll have to choose your program over the many other compelling ones that the universe has now equipped your mind with.

Sharing yourself with those who you haven't had a chance to trust, is the most powerful vulnerability exercise I have ever done.

We become masters because we practice and develop humility to receive criticism

The beginning of my self-care started with traveling with people who had tons of experience being a nomad. Going from odd job to odd job, saving money and earning flight points to keep traveling. The path I was going on was very shaky and scary because I really dreaded having to talk to people face to face. To my surprise, every time I repeated the story to another stranger, the story evolved in my voice. It wasn't a story to make people feel sorry for me. It became a story that people could listen to and experience my life and struggle with me, and come out feeling like we've gone on an adventure together.

All images were taken by me on my adventures :)