In the last eight to twelve weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about things. When I was younger, I used to think tears were a sign of weakness. I believed if I couldn’t keep my emotions in check then I would be considered weak and fragile. As I got older, I gave myself permission to feel my emotions, but I still knew how to keep my feelings in line when I wasn’t alone. Lately, I can’t seem to control them like I used to. Since constantly going through grief and dealing with loss after loss, I started to feel unstable. I cried more in the last couple years than I ever had in my entire life. It got so bad that I started to feel so fragile, and I hated how I no longer felt like I could control all these feelings that I had piling up inside of me. As much as I hated how much of a lachrymose person that I had become, I started to see that my constant tears weren’t a sign of weakness.
In the media I started to see so many people either spiraling out of control with erratic behavior or going as far as ending their life. It was an occurring topic on all of my newsfeeds and social media timelines. It shows you just how important mental health really is, and then you wonder how they got to that point. There are a lot of depressed people in the world, and we all handle our depression differently, but why? Why do some of us make it out of this dark tunnel alive and still able to manage, and others do not? You can say it’s different levels of depression (as in maybe they’re going through more than others). You can say it’s genetics and maybe there’s another underlying mental illness that the person is not aware of, and it’s been left untreated for too long. Anyone can make a lot of guesses and observations, but I’ve seen people go through the darkest situations time after time and somehow, they’ve made it out of the lion’s den. I’ve also seen people succumb to a horrible fate from one incident that may be minor to someone else. So, it varies from person to person. It’s not always what people go through as a whole. You can’t compare situations and base it off one scale. It’s about the psychological health of each individual. Just like everyone has a different level of physical pain tolerance, we all have a different tolerance level when it comes to mental and emotional pain.
I’ve said all of this to say that no matter how many tears you’ve shed, or moments where you felt like you couldn’t get out of bed, it doesn’t mean that you are weak. There’s a fighter inside of you that’s fighting. You might get knocked down over and over again, but you’re managing to find the strength to get up. You’re a fighter! Don’t give up on yourself! Keep fighting! You don’t have to do it on your own, seek help if you need to. There are so many ways to do therapy now. If you don’t want to go to an actual place then there’s video chat, over the phone, and believe it or not there are even texting solutions. Reach out to loved ones, join groups who might understand what you’re going through, find hobbies that relax you or make you laugh. Just keep moving forward.
To be honest, I was going to post this back in October, but I kept pushing it back. I fell into a huge slump last fall. It’s like September and October were the months where I felt numb and overly tired. I felt robotic, and then November came. November and December I was extremely emotional. I kept crying. I was always irritated. I felt as if there were these emotional flames inside of me that were being fanned and there was nothing I could do. When it was really bad, I would take one of my prescribed sedatives (for my anxiety) and it would put me to sleep for a day, and the following day I would feel quite numb. It basically gives me a temporary break from being on the edge. As you can see, the reason why I kept pushing back this post was because I felt like a fraud. The moment I thought that I felt strong I felt like I was dwindling shortly after. If you’ve read my previous posts and what’s been going on in the past few years, then you know I have had a lot of ups and downs. I’ve had a lot of emotional moments and inner battles every day/week for the past couple of years, but it seems like when September hit the ups and downs were less. It didn’t vary from day to day. It was steady and that was scary. I didn’t have moments where I could get out of it. I felt worse than I did before because it was constant. My grief was eating me alive, and I thought to myself how I could post this when I don’t truly feel any better. Now it’s January 2023 and I’m finally finding the courage to publish this blog post because even though I’ve felt weak, I realize that I’m still standing. I realized that I’m still trying to find ways to bring some light into my life. That shows me that I haven’t given up and that I’m not giving up. I might hit the Pause button every now and then, but I never hit End Game, nor do I plan to. I keep going, and if that’s not strength then I don’t know what is.
JustGottaMakeIt 