Two years ago, a good friend told me, "Your feelings are valid." Those are quite possibly the most important words I've ever heard. It's at least in my top five.
Think about it.
Your feelings are valid.
It's only four words, but they're so important. The mere existence of your feelings validates them. Someone else does not need to validate the way you feel in order for you to feel it.
The short version: it's okay to be sad.
In fact, it's more than okay to be sad. If you want to be sad, you have every right to be, regardless of what other people think, regardless of what other people tell you. If something makes you sad, no one has the right to tell you whether or not it's okay to be sad about that.
As a teenager, I think that's a really important thing to hear. I wish someone had told it to me years ago or that it had been something I could figure out on my own. I'm tough and I'm headstrong, but I'm sensitive, too, the annoying kind of sensitive. I cry when I'm angry. I cry when I'm stressed. I cry when I'm sad.
Someone once told me that I cry too much. And so I began apologizing when I cried. But that's not right either.
Regardless of what anyone else says, it's okay to cry. It's okay to be sad.
Sadness is personal. It is not meant to be understood or approved by others. It is a way of coping when things get hard. It's a way of acknowledging that something has gone wrong and that you need time to accept that. It is an important part of life.
Anyone who says that they're never sad is either a lier or they're not truly living.
In order to take full advantage of life, you have to put yourself in a position for things to go wrong. You have to make yourself vulnerable. You have to open yourself up to sadness in order to experience the greatest kind of happiness.
So next time you want to have a good cry, don't stop and think, "Is it all right that I'm sad about this?" Instead, ask yourself, "Does this make me sad?" And if the answer is yes, then go ahead and have that cry. It will be cathartic, and it will make you feel better.
It doesn't matter what other people think.
Your feelings are valid just the way they are, just the way you feel them.
