About a month ago, shortly before last Friday the 13th, I decided I should do something intentionally nice for myself every single day. I didn’t think it would be easy but I genuinely didn’t think it would be hard. Some days were easy. I ordered a coffee mug from a ceramic artist who I know from back in my days as a mommy blogger. Had coffee with a bestie. Ate more vegetables. Some days were hard. Not because I couldn’t think of something nice to do for myself. Because I forgot I was supposed to be doing something nice for myself.

When I’d think of it I would will myself to either do something nice or find something nice I had done for myself that day and name it. One of the things that stood out the most is that sometimes the only way to be kind to myself is to say no. I want to say no to everything all the time. Okay I want to say no to most things. But I don’t. It’s still hard to explain to people the absolute drain being around humans puts on my system. Now more than ever.                                                                                                    

Something about being on a high dose of medicine that works to control my ADHD symptoms unleashes all of my autism. From the outside I sometimes wonder what it looks like. I wonder what the perception of me is. I’ve worked so hard my entire life to protect that perception. And I protected it so well and so thoroughly that I couldn’t even really perceive myself sometimes.     

When you compare yourself, your humanity, and your progress to everything you were supposed to be it’s a good time to ask yourself who decided who and what you’re supposed to be. When I reflect on it I can feel my anti-authoritarian rebellion streak start to glow with heat. Face burning with justified rage that someone dared to judge me.                                        

So part of self-kindness over the last 30 days was also anger, reflection, and creation. I let myself run with something I’ve been in love with for years when every other time it has come up in my life I have pushed it back down as too weird and too much. I’m exploring a way to play in this world again. Like I used to when I was little and I didn’t know the boundaries of our world.

Not like when I grew up and thought I knew exactly where those boundaries were.

This morning was the last day of the mission. The second Friday the 13th of the year, but not the last. We have one again in November. I can’t help but feel like this effort isn’t complete. I’ve spent a lifetime holding myself to the standards of others. 30 days didn’t break me of that.                                                                                                

If my little assistantbot is counting right, there are 245 days between now and the next Friday the 13th. I want to come to the end of them less harmful to myself than I have been all these years. Not kinder to my daughter, my partner, my family, my friends — I’ll get there, I always do. I’ve never struggled to put others first. I want to know what it feels like to consider myself without checking how it lands on everyone else first.                                                                                               

I’ve marked it on the calendar.