I'm going be honest: I have been struggling with what to write as an article for this week's submission. And as I am nearing the deadline, I am still wondering what I can write about. I can write a listicle on fun things to do this summer, or I can write a funny article about finals coming up. However, for some reason, it's just one of those weeks where I don't have the energy to do that. I don't have the words to write a fun, lighthearted article when I am just emotionally, mentally, even physically exhausted. While I've been beating myself up over it this week, telling myself to get my act together and not act stressed out, I'm realizing that that is what's terribly wrong with our generation.
We are so afraid to show our pain, our weaknesses, our emotional distress. We live in this generation where you ask someone "How are you?" and the only answer you can respond is "Good, and you?" without even thinking about how you actually feel. And if you're not good, you're still going to lie and say that you are. We don't want to put our stresses onto someone else, and we don't want others to know what's going on behind these masks we live in. We feel inclined to look our best and act like everything is going fine in our lives. We're embarrassed if we show our pain, sadness or stress. If I am upset about something, I find myself hiding in my bedroom to avoid others so I'm not a burden on them.
As I've gone about my week stressing over a million different things, I find that I'm keeping it to myself. I've realized that what this is doing is just bottling up all my emotions. I have also realized that I'm pretending that there's nothing wrong to my friends and family. I've thought about this for a bit, feeling guilty for being so stressed and so tired.
But above all, this is the conclusion I've come to: It's OK to not be happy all the time.
Everyone faces their own battles. Everyone is freaking out over finals, their summer jobs, their relationships or even themselves. We have been brought up into this generation where we need to pretend nothing is going wrong and that our lives are perfect. We feel guilty for venting about our problems to someone. We feel ashamed if someone says "Are you OK?" - if we mistakenly show our pain on our faces. I think in some ways it's OK to keep to ourselves, but what's not OK is to feel guilty for being anything but happy.
It's OK. You are going to be OK. Putting on a strong and brave face as you go about your day when all you want to do is just hide in your room and shut out the world is OK. Making yourself feel bad about that pain you are facing is not. We all feel pain, we all feel stress, we all have our days when we're just not feeling it. We're just really good at hiding it, so don't tell yourself you're the only one. Because each and every one of us has our battles, and it's nothing to be ashamed of.
