Permission

It’s okay to feel like you’re not really here sometimes.

It’s okay to feel like you don’t fit in this world. It’s okay to look around you and think, “WTF is this? Why are we doing this? This is ridiculous.”

It’s okay to not get it. It’s okay to sort of get it. Other people don’t get you and that’s okay, too.

It’s okay to be like this. It’s okay to be like you.

It’s okay to combine weird foods and it’s okay to feel like your things are alive and it’s okay to get emotional about them. It is okay to mitigate this by having fewer things, and it is okay that this process can take a while because you still feel like you need to save things from dying a thing-death.

It’s okay to not get anything done. It’s okay to not be able to tell if you love people. Or if people love you.

It’s also okay if none of this makes sense to you. It’s okay if all of this makes sense to you. It’s okay to be tired of all this shit, even if you’re not sure what this shit is. It’s okay to be tired of wearing a mask. Literally. Figuratively. It’s okay to like wearing a mask. It’s okay to be afraid.

It’s okay to be white. It’s okay to Black. It’s okay to be brown. It’s okay to have skin. It’s okay for people not to know what you are and for you to not know what you are. It’s okay to be all kinds of queer. It’s okay to have a big body or small body or a body that hurts or a body that doesn’t work right sometimes. It’s okay to have a body that doesn’t say anything to you when well-meaning people tell you to “listen to your body.” What exactly does that mean? It’s okay not to know. Half the time they don’t know either.

It’s okay to like people who don’t like you. It’s okay to not like people who do like you. It’s okay to not explain yourself. It’s okay to stop explaining yourself to yourself.

It’s okay to stop improving. It’s okay to stop trying so hard to be a good person. It’s okay to stop trying hard to be what you think you should be, or what you’ve been told you should be, or what you’ve been told you should think you should be. It is okay to fail.

It is okay to have shitty boundaries. It is okay to think you have good boundaries and then find out that you have shitty boundaries. It is okay to feel unloved. It is okay to be unloved. It is okay to smell bad sometimes and it is okay to think smelling bad is funny.

It is okay to sing to your dog. It is okay to sing to your cat, your ferret, your bird, your appliances, to sing through the window at the person who delivers the mail. You will see results. The results are okay.

It is okay to not be able to heal your chronic pain with the power of your mind. It is okay to get a disease and be mad about it. It is okay to be relieved that the thing finally happened. It is okay to not enjoy other people’s cooking. It is okay to actually like vegan cheese.

It is okay to yell at the ocean. It is okay to bark at a cloud. It is okay to announce the moon every time you see it. It is okay to have a theme song. It is okay to not like music. It is okay to not get art. It is okay to wear uncomfortable clothes because that makes you feel like you are held together together and you are useful.

It is okay to not like seasons. It is okay to pray for disasters. It is okay to need time off. It is okay to plan your outfit for every possible funeral you could ever attend. It is okay to have emergency shoes.

It is okay to try to lick your toe just to see if you can. It is okay to flirt with people you probably shouldn’t sometimes. It is okay to have a daiquiri, virgin or otherwise, at 10:00 am on a Tuesday. It is okay to lie about who you were in high school.

It is okay to regret your tattoo, even though it’s not enough to ever mention it. It is okay to be jealous and it is okay for people to be jealous of you. It is okay to like your hair. It is okay to apologize to your parents if you want to. It is okay to remember your grandmother in a way she wouldn’t want to be remembered. It is okay to wonder if you made a mistake by leaving. It is okay to be embarrassed that you left.

It is okay to not break up when you should. It is okay to not know if it’s abuse and it is okay to still not know ten years later. It is okay to not like your nose and not want to change it, either. It is okay to remember some of the jokes and still laugh.

It is okay to not read the books. It is okay to throw away a pile of paper. It is okay to not know what to do with all this stuff. It is okay to sometimes want to wear the same clothes you wore when you were thirteen. It is okay to have an ambivalent relationship to pantyhose.

It is okay to be afraid of dryer fires, plane crashes, and stagnant water. It is okay to sing a song about stagnant water. It is okay to have nightmares about stagnant water. It is okay to have nightmares about your pets dying and that you are hanging off the edge of a plane. It okay to have rules about the dryer. It is okay that you regret leaving. It is okay that you regret staying. It is okay that you are angry. It is okay that you don’t always know whose voice is yours. It is okay to look up to people younger than you. It is okay to feel like you understand things you are not supposed to understand and keep that to yourself.

It is okay to doubt whether your illness is real. It is okay to keep pictures of yourself when you are sick as a reminder that your illness is real. It is okay to pretend that some people don’t exist, especially if they would rather you did not exist. It is okay to be worked up about it, too.

It is okay to wear long sleeves for one whole summer just to see if you can stand it. It is okay to wet your pants because you wanted to know how long you could hold it, and you found out. It’s okay to have to go on birth control to keep from bleeding through your clothes. It’s okay to wonder what that flashing light is. It’s okay to think it is a UFO or a secret camera, or the ghost of your grandfather, and it is okay to look for messages in the clouds and find exactly what you’re looking for.

It’s okay to be more excited about something than anyone else. It’s okay to be excited about everything you create. It’s okay to hate everything you create. It is okay to be indifferent to your best art, your most impactful work, your greatest contributions.

It’s okay to feel a little gross about your past sexual behaviors. It’s okay to not do anything about that.

It’s okay to not confront people who have harmed you. It is okay to confront people who have harmed you. It is okay, even when the people who harmed you are you.

It is okay to only make amends if you want to. It is okay to tell the same story over and over and over again. It is okay to change the story a little each time. It is okay to amuse yourself.

It is okay to run out of things to say. It is okay for people to run out of things to say to you. It is okay to have a cocktail, or not, right now. It is okay to give up, or not.

It’s okay to stop reading this. It’s okay to stop reading, period. It’s okay to not be able to take in any more information.

It’s okay to be weird. It’s okay to be sensitive. It is okay that this makes your life hard.

It’s okay to be really, really tired. It’s okay to want to burn down your life sometimes. It’s okay to actually burn down your life sometimes.*

It is okay to stop. It is okay to start. It is okay to neither stop nor start. It is okay to feel stuck.

It’s okay to chance it, that it all will be okay. It’s okay to do it anyway. Do you really need permission? The way you feel right now, however you feel right now, this is it.
 
 
 
 

*Actually, not literally, okay?