Last school year I served as a resident advisor in one of the dorms on campus. And no this is not an article about my overall work experience or horror stories, but just about one particular moment.
At the end of the year, there was a celebration. We signed mugs for the seniors and supervisors, ate nachos, and received paper plate awards. Mine was Resident Spiritual Goddess, very fitting. The final activity was writing notes of appreciation for everyone and putting them in jars we would receive when we moved out.
I got my jar on May 1st and in the midst of moving into my sublet, I lost the jar. There was a day I was feeling exceptionally down and I thought the kind words would fill me up but it was nowhere to be found.
Fast forward 25 days later, I have numbing depression and I'm trying to motivate myself. I go searching in my room for plastic spoons because I don't feel like doing the dishes and I'm trying to force myself to eat. It seems that I always find one thing when I'm searching for something else. Anyway, I find the jar and a part of me lights up but also think "Where was this a few weeks ago?".
I start to read the 15 or so messages and they're very similar to each other and every other note I've ever received. "I love your energy" "You light up the room" "It was great becoming your friend". I appreciated those messages but like I said, I heard it all before and it wasn't what I needed to hear in that moment.
It wasn't until I got to the last message that my numbness broke. The message read, "You're the bomb and you're gonna get through this." My face softened and I almost cried because I was and still am going through a long and rough process of healing.
I turned the note around to see who wrote it. Silly me, I was reading through the jar of notes so fast I didn't even recognize my own handwriting.
I couldn't believe it. How could I forget that I wrote myself a note? It's such a me thing to do. And I couldn't believe that my words of encouragement almost brought me to tears.
For so long during my healing, I was looking to others for support and validation, which is normal and completely okay, but if you don't hear that same support and validation from yourself, other people's words won't matter.
If you don't fill yourself with thoughts and messages of love, those same messages from the outside will feel foreign. Sometimes you really have to remind yourself of that you can get through whatever life throws at you. So, ask yourself, "What do I need to hear right now?" And don't go searching for anyone else, say it to yourself.
