I found myself in a serious dilemma. I was at a loss for words but couldn’t bring myself to face what I didn’t want to believe. How many times have all of us found ourselves in situations that have knocked the wind out of our sails, the perfect out of our “plans”, and the happiness out of our days?

It could have been an event you were looking forward to, a day off, or a normal Monday. You could have had high expectations for what you thought that day would bring, or in some cases, what you thought it “should” bring and then you found out all too well, that most things rarely go as planned. When you find out that the perfect person isn’t perfect or the imaginary ideas that you believed in as a kid aren’t real, you lose a sense of innocence, maybe the last little bit that you even thought you had left.

So it is back to square one for you. That person turned out not to be your soul mate, that job you dreamed of turned out to be horrible, that vacation you spent a lot of money on, and many weeks planning went to hell on the first day. These things happen, that is life, but where do you go from there? Sure you can always come home from a vacation, you can adjust to being on your own and single, you can even pick yourself up after a bad job choice, but what about the emotional aspects of these things that turned out to be different then as planned? You can put a band-aid on a wound and treat it and it will heal, but it is not as easy when it comes to the emotions surrounding life events, and the expectations we place upon them.

We put expectations on things because we want to salvage the imagination we had as a kid that made life so much better then the reality, so we dream, we plan, and we set ourselves up for failure. A healthy dose of optimism and hoping for the best is good, it is a part of life, and it is generally what keeps us happy. But we can’t always sustain happiness when we choose to pretend like our reality isn’t as bad as it tends to be.

We fear dealing with the hard feelings and realities life throws our way because they aren’t pretty, they aren’t what we are used to feeling, so we shove them down, and hope for the best. We wonder why we can’t heal from past hurts. We wonder why we can’t stop dating the same destructive people. We wonder why we find ourselves in the same cycle over, and over, again.

Trust me, I am just as guilty as the next when it comes to these things. I am also just painfully aware of reality and that tends to make me face things head on, whether I like it or not.

Pretending like bad things don’t happen or that things are perfect all the time is unhealthy. Letting people treat you and the ones you love unfavorably and bottling up all of your feelings towards the situation is unhealthy.

When life hits you hard know this, no matter how many people are posting stupid jokes, or perfect pictures on social media, most of them are going through things that hurt them too. No one is going to post that their friend lied to them, their family member hurt their feelings, or that they really can’t stand their co-worker. Believe it or not, no matter how much over-sharing you see online, most people are shy about the tough stuff they are facing.

So when you come home from an awful day at work and feel extra isolated because everyone else on social media seems to be having a great day, know that you are not alone. Yes, even I use an obnoxious amount of emojis in text messages when I am sad that reflect nothing of the saddened sort.

There is power in knowing that sometimes you might be so sad that you feel like it will never end, you might be so disappointed and angry that your chest hurts, and that is okay. You need to feel the good, the bad, the ugly, the perfect, and the not-so-perfect to know you are human. Cry it out, exercise it out, do what you have to do. Just make sure you face what you are feeling. You will never move on if you don’t and if you feel like you can move on without facing something, it might be fine temporarily but those types of feelings always catch up, no matter how long they seem to lie dormant. Stop being afraid to feel things, it means you are alive, and for that solely you should feel like you have something to be grateful for.