I’m Slowly Learning to Be Enough for Myself. Again.
A lesson from my 28th birthday
A lesson from my 28th birthday
Please, put away your lectures and grow some empathy.
I knew I had to do some soul and spiritual searching in order to overcome this battle with anxiety.
It took me 19 years to finally realize how important it is to be proud of myself.
You need to advocate for yourself and make decisions that prioritise your well-being and dignity at all times.
No one ever told me that you don’t need a substance to become an addict.
Having spent many days of my childhood playing in my grandparents’ garden, it’s become my natural instinct to look for greenery wherever I go.
You have to prioritise your mental wellbeing whether you’re currently with a romantic partner or not. Rewrite the narrative of your past hurt. Redefine yourself.
When uncertainty looms over and many sources of comfort are severed, anxiety is inevitable and fear might deplete your strength. It might feel like part of who you are has been taken away and you’re at a loss as to how to fill yourself up again.
After all, humans are social creatures, however introverted or extroverted we are. Meaningful conversations, whether they’re exchanged in person or through technologies, have the power to keep us close, comforted, and hopeful of the day we meet in person again.
I want those of you who are struggling to remember that this will pass. It is a pandemic but, like all others in the past, it will end at some point.
I realised that I didn’t need my friend’s advice. I didn’t need him to act like a therapist. I actually knew what to do. But it wasn’t the point. The point is, it’s hard to battle mental illness alone.
I’m depressed. But I’m grateful I have writing because otherwise how else could I be so completely myself and feel understood even just by putting the words out there?
You have to make the mistakes, then you can learn the lessons. You have to walk through the pain, then you can find the answers that matter.
We all have external and internal lives, and no one should assume they are always in sync.
You’re not afraid to be emotional and you don’t try to avoid them, especially the negative and difficult ones. You let them happen to you while you understand that your emotions are temporary.
I’d always been good with my alone time and being myself so this episode really freaked me out. It was intense and kept spiralling. I couldn’t even function properly in my day-to-day life as I was constantly distracted, overwhelmed by anxiety and fatigue.
Past decisions are just that: done decisions that belong to the past. Most likely, you did what you did because it was your best option in that moment given the circumstance — there’s no point in regretting.
I’ve made bad decisions. I’ve been extremely irrational. I’ve done things that made absolutely no sense. And I realize for the most part, it was because I had no idea what my priorities and values were.
If you loved yourself, you would accept your past, your flaws and every wrong turn you take. You would give yourself the permission to be imperfect, to make mistakes, to get lost in a pair of ocean-blued eyes and live life to the fullest. If you loved yourself, you would forgive yourself.