"At least, I tried"

It scares me, you know? It scares me not to try my best to get what I want to, it scares me not to give my best, it scares me not to fight with all my strength. 

Because I know I'd regret that, I know I would be disappointed at myself. 

I will push until my arms are failing. I will think until I feel my head can take no more. I will write until I can't feel my hands. I will scream until I can't say a word more. I will fight until there's nothing left of me to give. 

I don't want to wake up one day thinking: "I could've tried". I'd rather wake up one day saying: "At least, I tried".

I hope you do the same. 

Taking back control.

There comes a time in your life in which you lose all control, in everything. You can't control what's happening, you can't control your feelings, you can't control your reactions to the current situation, you can't control anything. 

You freak out, you desperate. "What the hell can I do? How did I let it get so back?", you ask yourself. 

Calm down, sit down for a moment and breathe slowly. Sometimes things seem worse than they actually are, let's see them with perspective.

Think in depth about the situation: 

- What is the situation? 

- What happened so I got into this situation? 

- What has been my reaction to it so far?

- Has my reaction to the situation make thing better or worse?

- What can I change so the situation changes as well? 

It's natural to you freak out when you feel like you've lost control. However, the same way that you've lost it, you can get it back. 

It's your time to realize that you can take control of the situation, you might not be able to control what happens in your life - but you can control how you react to that.

Once you've taken back control, never let it go because it will be the best weapon you could have - control.

Mistakes.

We're human, we make mistakes. We do things we regret later. We say things that hurt other people, even though that wasn't out intention. We try to do things a certain way, but they turn upside down and everything gets fucked up. 

Whether we want it or not, no matter how hard we try, we'll end up making mistakes.

Mistakes are something to learn from. Of course they make you feel bad, but the fear of making mistakes can't stop you from moving forward. Only if you make mistakes you'll know best in the future, you'll know what to do and what not to do.

If we didn't make mistakes, we would never learn.

In addition, it's something that happens to all of us. There's no person in the world who hasn't made mistakes.

We can do two things:

We can regret them all our life and spend it feeling bad with ourselves because we made mistakes, or we can learn from them and become a better person. What do you prefer?

"Promise me you won't do it"

If there's someone in your life who you care about having a rough time for whatever reason and you want to help them, this post is for you. 

If this person we're talking about is having issues related to self harm, eating disorders, susbtance abuse, I'm going to give you some advice. 

First of all, you need to understand that these are very serious issues, and you cannot and shouldn't just look the other way. Even though those aren't suicidal acts themselves, they can be really dangerous to the person, and also the risk of suicide becomes higher. 

Secondly, there's something you need to know - this is not a choice. The person who's suffering from any of theses issues (or any other issue) didn't choose that, so don't blame them, don't shout them or reprimand them because it's not only useless but also potentially harming. 

Thirdly, do not tell them to promise you they won't do it. I know it's the first thing that you do when you realize someone you care about is doing something which is hurting them, but you need to think about that with perspective. Asking them to promise you they won't do it might probably cause a stressful situation and could cause them feelings of guilt if they can't keep the promise. As I said before, it's not a choice, therefore sometimes they just can't help it. However, you can ask them to promise you to try or to call you or something if they're having urges of doing that.

Fourthly, show them support. This is a hard situation and your loved one is probably going through a rough time, for this reason, showing them you care, that you're there if they needed, just reaching your hand, is something they'll be grateful for. 

Fifthly, do not blame yourself. This is something really important as well. You're trying your best, you're doing it great but if they relapse or can't stop doing that it's not your fault. It's not easy to help someone who's going through any of the issues I mentioned, you will probably feel frustrated. Keep this in mind - none of this is your fault.

Sixthly, suggest them asking for help. We all need help sometimes and it's not weak to ask for help. Encourage them to ask for help from an adult, or even professional help. Show them it's not something bad and that it will help them - it's actually the best for them. Nevertheless, don't pressure them.

Seventhly, if it goes far, if you think their life might be in danger, tell someone. It doesn't matter if you promised not to tell anyone or if they will hate you for that, if they're in danger you need to tell someone what's going on. If you need to call an ambulance, do it. If you need to call their family, do it. If you need to call the police, do it. They'll be mad at you, they won't like it - but it's for their sake. 

Well, I'm not going to write more advice or the post will become too long. This advice is just personal and talking from experience, keep that in mind. I hope that it helps you in anyway, if you need any other advice or help you know where to find me.

Society doesn't rule.

Somehow we end up thinking about society whenever we're going to do something. 

"What will society think?" "Is this what I'm supposed to do/be?" "How does society see this?" are questions that we think about before making most of the decisions about ourselves. 

One way or another, society ends up being the "thing" we never forget about. Society ends up being the dictator that holds us, that keeps us as prisoners. 

They try to make us think that society isn't the dictator, with the lame excuse that they're not obliging us. Nonetheless, what happens if we don't obey society? Suddenly the world hates us, because we're different. If you're different, you're out. Not obliging society means that you'll probably be discriminated, hated, and, who knows what else? 

Society dictates us how to be, and if you don't obey, well, face the music. What does this mean? We're being obliged indirectly. 

Okay, this is what society, the world, tells us. This are the cards they give you to play with. Do you want to know what I think?

Society doesn't rule. This is what I think. 

You don't have to obey society, you don't have to be as they tell you to be if you don't want to. You need to be as you want to, no as someone else wants. After all, the person who should matter the most to you is yourself, and you deserve to be happy. You have the right of being as you want to be, of being yourself. 

They tell you to face the consequences, well, as long as you don't hurt anyone, there's nothing wrong with being who you are. If they don't like it, you deserve better people than that in your life. There will be bad consequences, I can't tell you otherwise. But, guess what? You can also fight, fight for your rights, for what you deserve. 

There's a consequence they don't like to tell you about... being yourself is the first step to take if you want to be happy. Are you going to let society rule? Or are you going to let yourself rule? 

It's your life. Society doesn't rule - you do. 

Eating disorders.

Did you skip any meal today? Did you make yourself throw up today? If you did, or if you want to do it or basically do it whatever frequency, please, stay with me for a while. 

It won't take long, I promise.

I don't know you, and you probably don't know me either, so it's the same for the both of us. For this reason, I don't know what's going on in your mind, your thoughts, your life and so on. I'm not going to talk to you about what I don't know. 

Do you tell yourself "only until I reach x (x being a number of weight), then I'll stop"? I want to tell you something - that doesn't work. You think that you'll be happy with your own image when you reach a certain weight, so you do unhealthy things to reach that, thinking that it's the way to see yourself in the mirror and think "I like it", or maybe because you think that that way you'll be thin enough. That way you end up living in a vicious circle, because when you reach the weight you wanted to, you'll want to lose more weight. 

I can't tell you to just stop and eat the meals you should, talk is cheap, but the reality is different. It's not that easy, I know. That doesn't mean that you can't do it - you can do it. 

First of all, you need to realize that there's nothing wrong with your body, and, if you want to lose weight for whatever reason, let's set the record straight - do it healthily. What does that mean? Eat, you need to eat. You should eat five meals a day without eating less and skipping any of them, because they can be healthy, which is actually better for your health. You can do some sport (regularly but not as an obsession, no extremes). 

Very important: your body isn't the problem, so, causing it that damage will not make anything better. Also, it can cause you many health problems in the future, or very soon. 

You don't have to do to your body what you're doing. You don't deserve it, nor does it. You don't deserve to go to bed feeling hungry because you barely ate dinner, or you skipped it. You don't deserve to go through all this. You deserve to love yourself and live a healthy life. 

However, as I said, talk is cheap. It's easy to tell you just not to do it, but you still feel guilty whenever you eat, and you still hate what you see when you look into the mirror. I cannot change that, and believe me, I wish I could. Nevertheless, I can give you some advice, hoping it can help.

- Be aware that society standards don't need to be followed by you, you don't have to be as the people you see in magazines or TV. Actually, usually being that way is unhealthy.

- Try to find parts of your body that you love and embrace them! Step by step try loving more and more parts of your body, even though it's hard, try to find parts you love.

- Reach out. I'd point this as the most important thing. If you can seek professional help, I recommend you doing that, it's a real help and there's nothing wrong about that. Nonetheless, whether you can't, you can search for help other way. If you have someone close to you who you can trust, you can open up to them and share your feelings with them. It can't help as much as a therapist of course, but it's something. Also you can search for self-help books or pages, they're an useful resource of help. 

Besides all that, I always say this but I don't mind repeating myself. I'm also here to listen if you need it. You can contact me on Twitter, ask.fm, here on blogger, and in most social networks by just searching: "bandskeepalive". 

Have a good night guys, love y'all! <3

A break.

A break.

We all have a break sometimes. We have a break in high school in the middle of the morning, in jobs there's a break as well, we take a break when we're studying and we've been studying for so long, we take a break many times and for many different reasons, don't we?

Sometimes, when we take a break it's because we're lazy, but most of the times it's because we need it, we need a break.

Is it wrong to take a break? Definitely no. Don't you ever think that.

If you need a break, it's totally okay to take one. When, for whatever reason, we're tired, exhausted, the best thing to do is take a break. After we've taken that break, we'll probably feel more powerful and ready to win! It's exactly like when you've been working all day and then you go to sleep and sleep for like ten hours, what happens? When you wake up you're full of energy.

When I'm talking about taking a break, I talk about many kind of breaks. For example, it could be taking some time for yourself, like relaxing and chilling. I don't know, whatever it means to you to take a break, what matters is that when you finish your break you come back all out!