I’ve always been a happy-go-lucky gal. I try my best to be positive all the time, and to start and end each day with a smile. But lately, I’ve felt very different.
I am wrecked with sadness. I am exhausted from faking all the smiles and laughs. My body physically aches from how much my heart hurts, and some days I can’t help but sit in my bed and cry. For a while, I tried to hide the way I felt. I thought that it was wrong to feel this way, I thought people would look at my differently. But then a friend reminded me of something we all should remember: It's OK to not be OK.
Sometimes life throws a lot at us. And by throw, I mean really throw, like a professional baseball pitcher at 95 miles an hour. You know what I mean. One of those days where you’re already having a super tough day and you might just break in half if one more bad thing happens to you, and then of course it does. When life does this to us, we must remember that we're not alone.In fact, we’re not alone at all.
Earlier this week, I had ice cream with a couple of my friends. I sat there in tears, crying for several reasons. When my friends asked me what was wrong, I told them, "I'm not OK."Silence fell over the room until one of my friends said, "I'm not OK, either."
A sense of peace fell over me. I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t weird that I felt this way; in fact, it was normal.
If you clicked on this article hoping to get some big advice on how to feel OK when you don’t, then you came to the wrong place. I don’t really have any advice because I’m still trying to escape the sadness myself. But I can leave you with this: In the midst of your sadness, there is beauty all around you. Everyday beauty that sometimes we take for granted. The normal, everyday stuff that makes your body feel tingly and your soul feel full.
You know things like when it’s a beautiful day and your class gets cancelled so you get to enjoy the sunshine. Or having late night dance parties around the kitchen with all your friends.
Sadness and in life is inevitable, but if we never felt pain, then we would never know joy.
I heard a song on the radio the other day that I thought was something we all need to remember. The song went like this: “Been more smiles than there's been tears, been more good than bad years.”
Life is not always easy, but it is always good.Bad days may be upon us now, but for every bad day we have, there are more good days coming.