By Josephine N. //
The past few months of last year were tough. I remembered waking up one morning feeling helpless and empty. I felt that there was something lacking in my life and, me being me, told myself that it was absolutely necessary that I do something about it. “I scared myself this morning,” I convinced myself. “I don’t ever want to feel like that again. I feel like I should be able to handle this, you know?” So what did I do? I applied and got myself an internship, two part-time jobs and was actively volunteering in a voluntary welfare organisation (VWO), whilst studying.
Honestly, if you ask me, the experiences I gained were nothing short of amazing. They brought me out of my comfort zone and made me a better person. I met wonderful people whom I could connect with, and interacted and worked closely with people I would never have imagined having any kinds of conversations with.
However, my intent behind “doing so many things” was wrong. They merely formed a facade to mask my inner feelings of insecurity and emptiness. Occupying myself with so many things was a way to convince myself and others around me that I could easily handle whatever life threw at me. Did it make me feel better? No. In fact, people around me thought, “she knows what she is doing” and “she’s got her life together”. I lost my network of social support, and thought that nobody knew me well enough to understand what I was going through.
We have a cultural aversion towards showing our weaknesses—or, at the very least, we dislike even appearing weak. We’re taught from young that showing our vulnerabilities would put us in a disadvantaged position, which ultimately causes us to lose in this “dog-eat-dog” world. Such a mentality could potentially prevent people from seeking help as it would imply some kind of character weakness or a personal defect.
It is now 2018 and I want to send a very important message:
You should not be able to handle everything you are living with. Collapsing is normal. Let’s take a step back and acknowledge that life gets too big for everyone at some point in our lives.
So, for people out there who are feeling what I felt and sometimes continue to feel: you are amazing. You are amazing for being able to handle this for so long, even though it is not expected that you should. You are not a disappointment; you are not letting anyone down. It’s okay to not be okay.
And for those of you who are reading this and happen to think of someone who is feeling a little down lately, I hope you can take the first step. Ask if they are okay, because trust me, even though their reply might be “I am fine, thank you!”, it will make their day. Don’t assume that the person is feeling fine and functioning well just because they look like they are. The idea that something so deeply rooted in a person’s mind would be obvious via their face and external behaviour is absurd—we can’t recognize sadness in someone just by looking at them. Show that you care by through your thoughtful actions because together we can help each other heal.
People analyst by day, mental health advocate by night, Josephine N. is a psychology graduate who aspires to make mental health meaningful and accessible to everyone.