It's Okay. Sometimes It Needs to be Said. So Often It Needs to be Heard.

Just a reminder.
It's okay.

It's okay to feel the way you are feeling. It's okay to feel trapped or bored or scared or inadequate. It's okay to do shit wrong the first time so that way you know that you are human, and that to be human is to error, and the only way to get better at something--to improve-- is to fail. Yes; fail. It's okay to fail. It's okay to want to give up. It's okay to want to escape because you realize that the version of yourself, the self that you are right now is trapped in an simulation of unrewarding, unsatisfying banality that will never change and worse, never end. It's okay to feel stupid. It's okay to have an unpopular opinion. It's okay to disagree. IT'S OKAY TO DISAGREE. It's. Okay. To. Disagree. It's okay to want to scream out loud when you are waiting in line for something that you don't want to be waiting in line for in the first place. It's okay to feel judged, like the kind of judgement you feel when you walk into a restaurant, or a coffee shop you don't think you belong in, because all the people are rich, or snooty, or of a different ethnicity, or loud, or clueless, and you think they're all staring at YOU because you are DIFFERENT, and it's almost like the entire room is conspiring against you, they are planning, they are in cahoots so that they can reveal what a jerk you are, what a loser you are, what a monster you are, but they are actually so IN-different to your existence that you might as well not exist, which is why they all bumped passed you without saying "excuse me," or "my apologies", because you are just meaningless wind to them. It's okay to not know which of those two scenarios would be worse. It's okay to want to feel safe, just like it's okay to want to protect someone you care about, just like it's okay to assume that the only person watching out for you is you, and so you might as well take precautions. It's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to find your strength. It's okay to people-watch. It's okay to find strangers fascinating or sexually attractive. It's okay to introduce yourself to strangers just like it's okay to want to curl up into a ball when someone you don't know makes eye contact with you. It's okay to be traumatized and it's okay to overcome your traumas. It's okay to blare your music. It's okay to be sexually liberated just like it's okay to be sexually reserved. It's okay to fear technology while you use it day in and day out, struggling with the notion that all you want to do is pull the screen away from your face and live and breath and experience something totally fresh and original and exciting, but if you do that then you might miss out on something inside the screen. It's okay to space out because life has overall not given you the fulfillment that someone, at some point in your past told you it would. It's okay to feel down and be hard on yourself.
It's okay to struggle.
It's okay to contradict yourself.   
It's okay to be lonely.     
It's okay to miss someone. It's okay to miss someone. It's. Okay. To. Miss. Someone.

It's okay.

It's okay to lionize someone even if they were cruel to you because you believe people are, overall, good and you know that if they were given a second, or third, or fourth chance, that they might finally treat you the way you'd like to be treated; the way you've tried your best to treat them. It's okay to want the best for someone that wants the worst for you. It's also okay to walk away from someone and leave them in your past. It's okay to forgive. It's okay to forget. It's okay to finally be okay with who you are just like it's okay to want to change something you don't like about yourself. It's okay to be imperfect. It's okay to improve. It's okay to escape reality. It's okay if you are fascinated by things that carry an enormous societal taboo, because you stay up all night contemplating the pain and suffering you've endured, or the hurdles you've overcome, or if pain is temporary then what might death feel like or if God exists or truly, if anything actually exists at all. It's okay to want to read more fiction because reality pisses you off.
It's okay to feel weird and misunderstood.

It's okay to feel weird and misunderstood because nobody can relate to your taste in movies, or your love for the satisfying sound a book makes when you close it because you finished a chapter, or because your real hero is the person who comes back with the pizza and it's still warm when you open the box, or because you love to take baths in the winter because something about the mystifying steam and loud rushing of scolding hot water behind a closed door is the best defense from the cold, dark, nothingness of the of the solemn season, or because whenever someone tells you to look at the stars, you'd rather look up at the moon, or because you play out a million little stories in your head whenever you listen to music on your morning commute, stories you are desperate to tell, but often times too distracted by clouds or politics or pretty girls to write them down, or because sometimes you feel like everyone has abandoned you and you are destined to die alone, or because when you look in the mirror, you don't see what everybody else sees, or because you feel like you were born in the wrong time period, or because you're passionate about politics but you hate people that are passionate about the politics you disagree with, or because you never quite got over that teacher in seventh grade that called you stupid, or that girl who called you fat, or that boy who called you ugly and retarded and a faggot, and sometimes when you're taking a bath at night in the middle of wintertime you wonder and hope desperately that you're not the only person who thinks these thoughts, otherwise what will they think of me?
It's okay to be weird and misunderstood.   

It's okay to hate social media but still have to incessantly check it even though you know it's just going to make you upset somehow but you fear irrelevance in a fast-paced post-truth word, and you know that these platforms have become consumerist parodies of themselves, and people are seemingly more divided than ever on topics because we seek labels in order to belong, and we are no longer conditioned to get along, but conditioned to be staunch and stubborn in our oh-so-correct view of the world, however solipsistic or myopic that view may be. It's okay to have opinions about issues that affect everyone just like it's okay to laugh at people's close-minded, over-opinionated statements. It's okay to be an idealist without being an ideologue. It's okay to want to share without being a communist. It's okay to seek power without being a fascist. It's okay to be a democrat. It's okay to be a republican. It's okay to be an independent, or to sit on the fence, or to check out of politics entirely.

It's okay to fucking curse. It's okay to pray even if you don't know if anyone or anything is out there listening. It's okay to not know. It's okay to be distracted and--oh hey an online quiz that tells me what Disney villain I am based on my astrological sign--
It's okay to get yourself back on track. It's okay to show respect for your enemies. It's okay to learn from someone older than you, younger than you, different from you. It's okay to be different and have differences and celebrate diversity just like it's okay to have traditions and look out for your own.
It's okay to be White, Black, Hispanic, Middle-Eastern, Asian, Native, Aborigine, Polynesian or wherever else you came from. It's okay to be a man. It's okay to be a woman. It's okay to be confused about which gender you are. It's okay to be straight or bi or gay or somewhere in between. It's okay to hate identity politics. It's okay to have feelings and cry and yell and lash out into the void. It's okay to fight with your addictions. It's okay to want more.

It's okay to get rejected. It's okay to freeze and feel uninspired. It's okay to say what you feel. It's okay to have certain thoughts and even write them down.

It's okay to be you.