It’s okay to hurt feelings

What’s one thing you know now that would have saved your younger self a lot of pain?

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I had 0 self-esteem as a kid and teenager and I had absolutely no clue about it. I thought I had plenty of self-esteem. I had my own style, attitude, goals, drive, scholarships, but none of that equaled self-esteem. 

What I lacked was boundaries. More than that, I lacked the courage to hurt people’s feelings when they crossed those boundaries. 

I was raised to be nice to everyone, say sorry, turn the other cheek, and try to make everyone feel good, to feel shame when I put myself first. 

My own feelings I was taught to suppress and ignore, because others were more important. Focusing on me was selfish. 

This thinking largely contributed to me ending up in an abusive relationship for 6 years. Luckily, I got out. So many don’t.

Telling my younger self all of this would have saved me a lot of pain. If someone had sat me down and told me that it’s okay to hurt a person’s feelings by saying no, to ignore unwanted attention and unwanted texts, to call out creepy behavior, to not internalize people’s reactions to my honesty, to prioritize my own well-being. 

If someone had done this, I would not have suffered so much, I would not have thought it was okay to endure abuse.

I was seventeen. Just a kid. And every adult in my life, including my abuser, failed me.

But that awful experience has made me a more well rounded person, more receptive, more critical, more astute, more observant, more protective of my time and peace and the things that matter. And all of that made me wiser faster. 

It’s also given me a plethora of raw, real content for the characters in my novels. In a lot of ways, the characters in Epic of Helinthia each represent certain phases of my own life, or certain people who were in them. All of them are flawed, messy, make mistakes, and go through some serious shit. And not all of them come out a better version of themselves. Some do though, but you have to read the series to find out who.