You know what they don’t tell you about healing? Sometimes it’s ugly. Sometimes it’s not bubble baths and journaling under a weighted blanket with soft lo-fi in the background. Sometimes it’s sitting in your car in the Walmart parking lot with tears running down your face, mascara halfway to your chin, contemplating ghosting your entire contact list… and then opening your Kindle app to a book about a morally gray man ruining a perfectly sane woman’s life in the filthiest way possible.

And you know what? That’s self-care too.

Because sometimes life be lifing in ways that no amount of scented candles or Pinterest affirmations can fix. And in those moments, you have to grab onto whatever tiny bit of comfort, escape, or petty chaos you can find. For me, that’s smut. The darker, filthier, and more deranged the better. If the male lead wouldn’t be arrested on sight, I’m not interested.

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📖 The Honest, Messy Side of Coping

I used to beat myself up about it. I thought self-care had to look a certain way. Yoga, green juice, and motivational podcasts from people who’ve never tasted struggle in their lives. But the truth is — self-care is about survival. It’s about finding something that makes the unbearable moments bearable. And sometimes that means losing yourself in a book where the only problem is whose bed someone’s ending up in next.

I’ve read the kind of books that would make my therapist do a double take. And you know what? Those stories saved me in ways deep breathing exercises never could.

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💀 Why It Matters

It matters because when you’ve spent years running from your feelings, sitting with them hurts like hell. It’s brutal. And those little, ridiculous, guilty pleasures — they matter. They remind you you’re still here. That you can still feel. That you can still laugh, cry, or get wildly turned on by a fictional hitman with boundary issues.

That’s healing too.

It might look like a breakdown in a Target parking lot followed by a 4-hour reading binge of morally bankrupt romance novels. But if it keeps you alive, if it gets you through another impossible day, if it makes you feel something other than numb — it counts.

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🖤 In Case No One Told You Today

Your version of self-care is valid. Whether it’s face masks and therapy or iced coffee, crying in your car, and opening up a book that would get you side-eyed at book club. You don’t have to apologize for what gets you through.

And if anyone judges you for your coping mechanisms, kindly remind them to mind their own trauma.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my Kindle is calling — and this morally gray menace just threatened to ruin the FMC’s life if she doesn’t kiss him. And honestly? Same, girl. Same.