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Treat Yo Self
Oct. 5th, 2019 08:11 amI have to travel for work, and I hate it. I’ve become fairly proficient at packing, but I always forget something. The last time I traveled, I forgot my special fancy facewash, and I had to use the bar of soap in the hotel room. According to conventional wisdom, washing your face with plain soap will turn you into a hideous scaly reptile, but it made my face as clear as it’s been in years.
It turns out that the magical ingredient to perfect skin is glycerin. Who would have thought?Fuck capitalism. Anyway, that’s not the point of this story, but a lead-in to what I want to say about the philosophy of “treat yo self.”
When I was a kid, my mother kept special guest soaps wrapped in fancy paper in a glass dish next to the sink, and I was forbidden to use them. I loved the way they smelled, and I would be creepy about it in the way that kids sometimes are, like, I would take them out of the dish and lovingly stroke them, all the while feeling super guilty about it. In my mother’s warped view of the world, nice things exist only to please other people, and I didn’t deserve to have or use nice things for myself unless it was directly in the service of someone else (such as wearing expensive clothing that I was far too young to enjoy or appreciate to a wedding or funeral, for example).
This mentality is unhealthy, obviously, so I got on Amazon and bought myself some nice guest soap like you’d get in a high-end hotel. It’s lovely. It’s also less expensive than special fancy facewash, and it works much better.
I think that maybe it’s sometimes difficult for people who grew up poor (or with abusive parents) to be able to trust their instincts when it comes to knowing what they want. If you feel like you can’t afford or don’t deserve nice things, it can be easy to second-guess yourself and thereby put yourself in a weird position where you’re unhappy because of the choices you’ve made specifically to spite yourself. To me, the point of “treat yo self” isn’t mindless consumption to fill an emotional void, but rather an acknowledgment that you have the agency to make yourself happy with the choices you make. If you allow yourself to choose what’s right for you, then you’ll be happy with what you have and won’t need to waste time and money on things you don’t need.
This probably sounds self-evident, but goddamn if it didn’t take me most of my life to figure this out.
It turns out that the magical ingredient to perfect skin is glycerin. Who would have thought?
When I was a kid, my mother kept special guest soaps wrapped in fancy paper in a glass dish next to the sink, and I was forbidden to use them. I loved the way they smelled, and I would be creepy about it in the way that kids sometimes are, like, I would take them out of the dish and lovingly stroke them, all the while feeling super guilty about it. In my mother’s warped view of the world, nice things exist only to please other people, and I didn’t deserve to have or use nice things for myself unless it was directly in the service of someone else (such as wearing expensive clothing that I was far too young to enjoy or appreciate to a wedding or funeral, for example).
This mentality is unhealthy, obviously, so I got on Amazon and bought myself some nice guest soap like you’d get in a high-end hotel. It’s lovely. It’s also less expensive than special fancy facewash, and it works much better.
I think that maybe it’s sometimes difficult for people who grew up poor (or with abusive parents) to be able to trust their instincts when it comes to knowing what they want. If you feel like you can’t afford or don’t deserve nice things, it can be easy to second-guess yourself and thereby put yourself in a weird position where you’re unhappy because of the choices you’ve made specifically to spite yourself. To me, the point of “treat yo self” isn’t mindless consumption to fill an emotional void, but rather an acknowledgment that you have the agency to make yourself happy with the choices you make. If you allow yourself to choose what’s right for you, then you’ll be happy with what you have and won’t need to waste time and money on things you don’t need.
This probably sounds self-evident, but goddamn if it didn’t take me most of my life to figure this out.
