Be Weird. Be Whole. The Freedom of Becoming Fully Yourself

Love Me Stone · Notes on Becoming

Be Weird.
Be Whole.

Stop editing out the parts of yourself that make you recognizable. Know your shadow. Follow what lights you on fire. Fail. Get back up. Become someone who belongs completely to herself.

There comes a point when being palatable becomes exhausting.

When you realize how much energy you’ve spent sanding down your edges, explaining your choices, softening your opinions, hiding your hunger, pretending not to want what you very much fucking want.

Trying to be understood. Trying to be liked. Trying to make the life that calls to you look reasonable enough that other people will approve of it.

And maybe the work isn’t becoming a better version of yourself.

Maybe it’s becoming a less edited one.

“Maybe the work isn’t becoming a better version of yourself. Maybe it’s becoming a less edited one.”

I Hope You Get Weirder

I hope you get weirder as you get older.

Not reckless. Not cruel. Not careless with the people you love.

Just gloriously, unmistakably yourself.

Wear the thing.

Get the tattoo.

Take the class you’re terrible at.

Dance badly.

Read strange books.

Change your mind.

Start over.

Go alone.

Say no.

Say yes when everyone expects you to say no.

Make something nobody asked for.

Become obsessed with something simply because it makes your pulse quicken.

There is something incredibly freeing about realizing that your life does not have to make sense to everyone watching it.

They aren't the ones who have to live it.

You are.

Your Shadow Is Still You

We talk so much about becoming our “best selves.”

But I’m not particularly interested in becoming a person made entirely of light.

I want to be whole.

And wholeness includes the shadow.

The darker rooms

• The jealous parts.
• The hungry parts.
• The angry parts.
• The sexual parts.
• The ambitious parts.
• The insecure parts.
• The parts that want attention.
• The parts that want recognition.
• The parts that want pleasure.
• The parts that want power.
• The parts that want love.

The parts we were taught were too much, too selfish, too strange, too loud, too needy, too dark.

You don't have to let those parts drive the car.

But maybe stop locking them in the trunk.

Your shadow isn't evidence that something is wrong with you. It's evidence that you're human.

Knowing what lives in the darker rooms of yourself makes you harder to manipulate because you no longer have to pretend those rooms don't exist.

You can walk into them. Turn on the light. Look around.

This is mine too.

Follow What Lights You on Fire

There are things that make you feel more alive.

You know them.

Sometimes you know before you can explain why.

A person. A place. A piece of music. An idea you can't stop thinking about. Something you want to create. A life you keep imagining when nobody is asking you to be practical.

Pay attention to that.

Not every spark needs to become a career. Not every desire needs to become a five-year plan. Not everything you love needs to be monetized, optimized, justified or turned into something useful.

Some things can simply make you feel alive.

That is enough.

The question worth asking What lights you on fire?

We spend so much of adulthood asking whether something is sensible that we forget to ask whether it makes our blood move.

I want more of the second question.

Go toward it.

You Are Going to Fail

And thank God.

Because I don't want a life so carefully managed that failure becomes impossible.

I want to try things I might be terrible at. I want to make things that don't work. I want to love knowing there is no guarantee. I want to risk embarrassment.

I want to walk toward things that make my stomach flip because I don't quite know if I can pull them off.

I want to fail.

And fail.

And fail again.

Then get up.

Maybe laughing. Maybe bleeding a little. Maybe embarrassed as hell.

But up.

“Every time you survive your own failure, it loses some of its teeth.”

You realize:

I can begin again.

That is a dangerous kind of freedom.

Once you're no longer terrified of looking foolish, there are suddenly so many lives available to you.

Let Them Think You're Weird

Some people will misunderstand you.

Let them.

Some people will think you've changed.

You probably have.

Some people will prefer the version of you who was easier to predict, easier to influence, easier to keep inside the little box they'd built for you.

That's okay.

You don't need to become hostile toward people who don't understand you.

You simply stop requiring their understanding before you allow yourself to live.

Because the older I get, the less interested I am in being universally digestible.

I would rather be deeply loved by a handful of people who know exactly who I am than vaguely approved of by everyone because I never showed them anything real.

Let me be strange.

Let me be passionate.

Let me care too much.

Let me change my mind.

Let me want things.

Let me fuck up.

Let me start again.

Let me contradict the woman I was five years ago because she hadn't learned what I know now.

Let me become.

Be More You

Maybe that's the whole thing.

Not becoming fearless.

Not becoming perfect.

Not finally reaching some polished version of yourself where everything makes sense.

Just becoming more willing to belong to yourself.

To know your light and your shadow. To trust your appetites. To pursue the things that make you feel awake. To fail spectacularly and discover the ground didn't swallow you. To get back up and try something else.

To disappoint the version of you that was built for other people's approval.

And to build a life that feels unmistakably yours.

Get weird. Get curious. Get it wrong. Fall down. Change direction. Want more. Try again.

Become someone you couldn't have become while you were busy trying to be acceptable.

You only get one life. Don't spend it auditioning for permission to be yourself.