"We're not a mistake" and "You can't earn love"

A very wise friend dispensed these grains of wisdom recently. So for all my fellow perfectionists, these are things that you probably already know, in terms of your "reasoning self", but emotionally... yeah, it can be a hard one to swallow.

We're all imperfect and we live in an imperfect world -cut yourself some slack. Making yourself perfect does not equal making yourself more worthy of love and being less perfect does not make you less deserving or less likely to receive it. Us Type-A's enjoy the idea that everything in life can be 'earned' -work hard, stay focused and you will succeed... right? Right. Except love does not work that way -whether it's love from our families, our friends, our teachers or romantic interests. Which, so, at first makes you feel disempowered right (because what the hell can you do about it right... all those 'games' are for naught)? The thing is that real love is not about power. Empowerment, disempowerment -both are moot. Yes, we may feel empowered as a consequence of love (or disempowered as a consequence of hate... just ask all those helpless women and kids in Karachi's slums)... but love itself is not about power. It's about love -that is, presence, warmth, closeness. And thank God for that because otherwise who'd help you up and hold your hand every time you fell? We can't control it all -often times this sucks, but well, what fun would life be if we controlled everything, and all of our mignons did whatever we said (even if, let's face it, we know what's best for them, for society, for the world... it's hard to care about things that are easy, or feel committed to things that are 100%-guaranteed in our control)?

So well, I do my best now (and before... these things are dynamic though so sometimes even if you think you know, you can forget) to just let it go. As they say in Pakistan, what to do.

After losing 4 lbs in 1 week, I got scared enough to up some of those calories... I mean, I'm just trying to be healthy here, really... it's just when you're not used to watching what you eat, you're more likely to err on the side of less... but you know, I'm working on it. I talk to the people I love about it. I'm talking to you about it. I still eat cookies or half-cookies if tempted by them and I try to eat when I feel hungry. Going easy on carbs and upping the veggies actually makes you feel more alive anyway. And as a good friend said to me today, in my defence, slight dietary restriction is not necessarily unhealthy, and there's just a fine balancing here that I'm working out. If you dropped 12-16 lbs and felt like a million bucks, you wouldn't want me to chastise you for it right?

Things to be grateful for today: fun lunch with good friend, soon-to-be fun dinner with other good friend, feeling confident in small group about learning some medical history-taking tips beforehand and therefore not being intimidated by small-group leader, sleeping in and feeling happy about it, sunny day, parents come back from vacation that felt like an eternity (despite having enjoyed me-time and independence again, I'm ready to not live in a big, empty house devoid of hugs... see at least, you get this latter when you have roommates!), feeling gorgeous... and MOST of all, making the time to write!

wishing you love...