As finals week comes to a screeching start, I thought it would be important to remind not only myself but others, that asking for help and not being entirely okay....is OKAY.
It all started in 2015…that lurking feeling you get in your stomach when something is going wrong. I tried to mask the feelings with such distraction, but at the end of the day, something just really felt really wrong. I would try and congratulate myself for being able to make it to my graduation and for the privilege of attending a 4-year college. I would try to keep quiet about any new thing going on in my life because well, to be honest, I didn't know how to really express myself. I had no inner being of light in me, waiting to finally be excited about something again; I really lost my drive. College was finally in full swing, I was halfway across the country with absolutely no one to call a friend, I shared my dorm with a roommate who'd rather be partying than hanging out with me, and I fell completely apart; I was a literal shell of whom I used to be. I started looking at my own being, as a critic on Rotten Tomato would, reviewing terrible low budget movies, staring somebody like John Cena or Mark Wahlberg. I became my worst enemy! My work was never enough, my grades were shy of mediocre, and I witnessed myself cracking and crumbling, and the pieces of myself I once knew so well, only grew larger and larger each time they broke off.
Then my feeling of self-doubt, almost started fading. I tried spending less time with people who just didn't make me feel good. I started taking a different route to class, and took more time listening to my professor, than my usual ignorance of their existence. I started just making my inner mental state, just simply better. This is when I, for myself and only myself, started to take stuff more seriously and overall felt a little better. I made time for fun and spunky things that would excite my mind; I reached out to old friends I made freshmen year, I started going to the gym to make a quick sweat sesh a therapy session, to say the least, I opened my heart to new people, I fell in love, tried hot yoga, made ice cream a weekly reward and I started complimenting strangers. Sometimes I think to myself, and wonder why I let myself fall so hard down when the pieces were so hard to collect. I often fall back into the way I "used" to feel… (I used "used" in quotation marks, due to my utter inability of actually escaping my inner demons, but something I try to at least project to the world that I am okay.) But to say the least, I am pretty okay. I feel just fine being okay and feel fine knowing that I can ask for help from not just my friends, but people on my school's campus, family members or just someone I can trust with my inner thoughts.
Remember that asking for help, in whatever capacity that is for you, is really honestly what you should be doing, and not something to ever feel shame or embarrassment over…we all deserve to feel okay, and we all deserve to see the world a little brighter.
Sometimes we don't feel okay but there are some resources to hopefully help your own inner demons.
If you deal with anxiety, stress or depression, there is a safe chat room you can join and just talk to somebody!! Sometimes its hard to reach out to those we have known so personally, but sometimes a stranger is an easy way to just speak up.
https://www.thinkpacifica.com/anxiety-peer-support-groups/
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