Just a while back, I used to be one of these cliché traumatized praise-seeking transfems (and just to be clear: there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!). I was very desperate for the smallest acts of praise directed at me. Though, to be fair, I always used to be somewhat selective: I didn’t want anyone to excitedly praise me - in some cases of praise from people I didn’t want to praise me, I would just ignore it, in others, it actually caused a very bad reaction in me.

Somehow, this has changed a lot recently.
Maybe it’s because I have finally learned to accept that I am worthy of appreciation for the things I do, because I have finally started to actually enforce that. I don’t know. I have written a lot about my self-esteem already earlier today^^

But honestly: it just feels wrong nowadays. You don’t get to judge me as good or bad. I don’t want that, I don’t need that.

I don’t want to be judged by anyone, except for the one being whose judgment guides my life.

And maybe that’s why it feels wrong. Even in the shape of a piece of paper citing her permission to consider myself a particular form of praised, it feels more real than anything anyone else could say. This is the one thing that matters. This is the one praise that reaches my brain directly, where I don’t fight back, the one that is just allowed to exist in my mind without struggle.

I avoid these particular words on purpose, because I genuinely feel uncomfortable just saying them. It’s hard enough for me to use them for praiseworthy entities who have nothing to do with any of this. It’s just… this is too powerful to joke about.

I have even realized that I have on one occasion abused praise that I received directly from goddess, by replaying it in my memory again and again, using the burst of excitement, happiness, and energy it gave me every single time to push myself far beyond my own boundaries. That’s how powerful this is for me. And honestly, it’s also dangerous, I no longer trust myself with this.

I keep my permission to consider myself praised with all the other sheets of paper on which I record her word: wrapped in a piece of cloth bearing the holy sign, in a little box in the drawer of my temporary altar. It’s perhaps the most precious thing I possess (not the specific paper, but the word itself). I get it out every once in a while during my rituals and indulge in it, but it’s not a thing I do every week, more of a thing for special occasions.

So yeah. That’s the more likely reason why I don’t really want to hear this phrase from anyone else anymore. It’s a far too special and meaningful thing for me to hear from goddess.