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A post shared by Giulia Rosa (@giuliajrosa) on Jul 13, 2020 at 7:59am PDT

Self-care is not selfish.

If someone calls you selfish because you set boundaries, don’t let them f*ck with you, or need to tend to your own needs first—drop your daggers and keep moving.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how people reacted toward me when I woke up from grief.

I’m sure they have a different story. Maybe they were sick of my sh*t. You know—the normal grief sh*t. Just being sad, going on a bender, talking nonstop about loss.

Or maybe when I finally stood up for myself, they didn’t like it. People do not like being faced with their own demons, especially when they’re constantly catering to ours.

Either way, there was a shift.

I’ve done a lot of soul-searching in the past few months. I’m self-deprecating and started to assume that I was the toxic one, I was indeed selfish, or I was the problem.

But I’ve come to terms with that being a concrete, slap-myself-in-the-face, big-old “no.”

We are allowed to look out for our best interests. If we feel that someone is slighting us, we are allowed to stand up for ourselves. If we feel that our time is being used or we are being manipulated to bend over backward for someone else when we are also struggling, it’s okay to make other plans.

I write often about how we are stuck with ourselves at the end of the day, but it’s because we really f*cking are stuck with ourselves.

I am all about giving to those in need, especially people we look at as friends. But if they do not understand our needs, where we are genuinely coming from, and cannot talk about it with us—are they really a friend?

I write these words for everyone struggling to get over a lost friendship that we were told was our own fault:

You cannot hide your agony
when alleviating someone else’s soul.
You cannot erase your sorrow
by making someone else whole.

The shadows you walk with
follow like persistent creatures.
And you must withstand them
when you show your darkest features.

When the ones around you disperse
and you are left to battle again alone,
Bethink that what you foster
should only guide yourself home.