Freckled Banana

That rug really tied the room together.

The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

—Carl Sagan (via sirmitchell)

Did you know, you can quit your job, you can leave university? You aren’t legally required to have a degree, it’s a social pressure and expectation, not the law, and no one is holding a gun to your head. You can sell your house, you can give up your apartment, you can even sell your vehicle, and your things that are mostly unnecessary. You can see the world on a minimum wage salary, despite the persisting myth, you do not need a high paying job. You can leave your friends (if they’re true friends they’ll forgive you, and you’ll still be friends) and make new ones on the road. You can leave your family. You can depart from your hometown, your country, your culture, and everything you know. You can sacrifice. You can give up your $5.00 a cup morning coffee, you can give up air conditioning, frequent consumption of new products. You can give up eating out at restaurants and prepare affordable meals at home, and eat the leftovers too, instead of throwing them away. You can give up cable TV, Internet even. This list is endless. You can sacrifice climbing up in the hierarchy of careers. You can buck tradition and others’ expectations of you. You can triumph over your fears, by conquering your mind. You can take risks. And most of all, you can travel. You just don’t want it enough. You want a degree or a well-paying job or to stay in your comfort zone more. This is fine, if it’s what your heart desires most, but please don’t envy me and tell me you can’t travel. You’re not in a famine, in a desert, in a third world country, with five malnourished children to feed. You probably live in a first world country. You have a roof over your head, and food on your plate. You probably own luxuries like a cellphone and a computer. You can afford the $3.00 a night guest houses of India, the $0.10 fresh baked breakfasts of Morocco, because if you can afford to live in a first world country, you can certainly afford to travel in third world countries, you can probably even afford to travel in a first world country. So please say to me, “I want to travel, but other things are more important to me and I’m putting them first”, not, “I’m dying to travel, but I can’t”, because I have yet to have someone say they can’t, who truly can’t. You can, however, only live once, and for me, the enrichment of the soul that comes from seeing the world is worth more than a degree that could bring me in a bigger paycheck, or material wealth, or pleasing society. Of course, you must choose for yourself, follow your heart’s truest desires, but know that you can travel, you’re only making excuses for why you can’t. And if it makes any difference, I have never met anyone who has quit their job, left school, given up their life at home, to see the world, and regretted it. None. Only people who have grown old and regretted never traveling, who have regretted focusing too much on money and superficial success, who have realized too late that there is so much more to living than this.

The Search for Self Confidence

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I’ve had BDD (Body Dismorphic Disorder) since I was a kid. I’ve always hated my body and my face. I generally find that everything about me is wrong:
Hair too straight and dull, eyes too small, nose too big, face too round,teeth too yellow, and so on. During one of my crisis once, I even remember sitting by the side of the bed ready to chop my belly fat off with scissors.
I want to raise awareness about BDD because it is a very serious disorder, which is sadly often mistreated and disregarded as a simple vanity problem. About 80 per cent of BDD sufferers have suicidal thoughts, that’s quite an alarming number.

Over the years I’ve been told things like “You’re just being ridiculous” or “You’re just fishing for compliments”. I’ve been shamed many times for being “too obsessed” with my appearance, sometimes by the very same people who would never tell an anorexic girl : “You’re ridiculous, some kids are currently starving in Africa.”
What people need to understand is that one doesn’t just snap out of it. Some of my friends suffer from it as well, friends that I find extremely attractive, and it breaks my heart to see they hate themselves so much.
It doesn’t matter how attractive you are by society’s standards, if you suffer from BDD, you will think you’re one of the most horrible looking people in the world. It’s a very painful state of being. (More info on BDD here : http://www.drphil.com/articles/article/539 )

I’ve made these self portraits because I want to monitor the evolution of my body image over the years. The one on the left was drawn 3 years ago and you can already tell I’m much more gentle to myself than I used to be. Yet at the time, I really believed I looked like that. Drawing seems to me like a good way to demonstrate how powerful the mind can be.
Also, like many other BDD sufferers, I tend to compulsively pick at my skin. It’s a habit I’ve been trying to quit for years but only recently have I realized how OCD it really is. In the past few days, I’ve been trying really hard to break the habit. Mirrors are generally a massive trigger for me, so the fact that I’ve been able to sit still in front of one for 4 hours to draw this makes me very proud.