Do you have a nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach when you're nervous? Is there a sense of guilt that haunts you in that rare and unintentional occasion that you do wrong by someone, or hurt someone's feelings? Are you critical of yourself when your pants are too tight, or do you question your parenting skills?
Now ask yourself if these thoughts affect your daily life. Do you obsess over these things, or do you make a mental note to work on them each day at a healthy pace?
Are you capable of accepting your imperfections? Do you take disagreements to heart? Have you experienced disappointment from someone you loved and trusted on a level that questions your self worth; past, present, and future?
I'm not pitching a mental health clinic commercial, but I ask because the quiet, lonely, sad, uptight, and lost feel all of this so much more than a person who can get through each day being thankful for what they have, and able to sort out life's normal tribulations without feeling eternally worthless.
We obsess over what we cannot control. We obsess over finishing projects that we start, no matter how trivial they are. For the love of all things insane, LEAVE US ALONE WHILE WE ATTEMPT TO CONCENTRATE. For us it is an accomplishment to get up and begin a task, so do us a solid and allow us the triumph of completing it. We feel no stability. We have no trust. We watch people all around us make the same mistakes or bad choices that we do, except they endure far less consequence, or that's how we see it anyways. We ask ourselves why we aren't good enough to be stable. Why do we work as hard as John Doe, but we struggle so much more? Why can't we have Jane Doe's family support? She had a baby in high school and her family still loves her. We made it through graduation, but we are whores whose lives will forever be a failure, or that's how we see it anyways.
We sometimes come from homes that functioned at or below the poverty level. We see adultery, substance abuse, and promiscuity and we often follow suit. The damage is done long before we realize what path we have chosen. We have no sense of self worth so we truly do not know that as people from broken homes, we still deserve more from life. Although we act on all that we know, we still feel viewed as the family disappointment. "It was supposed to be you. I thought you would do so much better than this." We feel guilt for not exceeding our family's expectations. The same family that failed to lead us by example and reassure us of our worth and abilities to beat stereotypes and statistics.
We want to live the life we put ourselves in the best we can. We want to make the most of our every day. We want to climb out of these dark and self destructive places, but guilt and fear hover over us like a threatening storm cloud. We never know when it will fall out and consume us beyond our abilities to fight it off.
We don't want to feel alone. We don't want to let judgement affect our opinions of ourselves. Why anyone would ever believe we make the conscious choice to live in a mental hell is beyond me.
We're often viewed as weak. We're told that we're caught up in self pity. We're told not to listen, not to react, and not to feel.
That's not how this works.
You cannot tell someone who feels so deeply about everything not to feel some type of way about anything. The majority of us would rather feel nothing, than to have to spend every day fighting to feel normal.
We fight triggers all day, every day. For some of us an argument is the sign of the end of an era. Someone is leaving, someone is never coming back, and nothing will ever be the same. In reality, everyone changes. Everyone learns and grows. They move and they better themselves. Most people learn from struggle. Our struggles feel more threatening and impossible. We do not want change because we want the time to become happy where we're at. We need extra time to convince ourselves we are where we're supposed to be, even if we're not. A mentally stable person can view an argument as an opportunity to make improvements to a situation that has stopped benefiting everyone involved. It is an opportunity for compromise and growth. Most people can make changes without leaving each other or turning their world, or another's world, upside down. Most of us have never met these kinds of people, or if we have then we've only witnessed functioning interactions from a distance and we're absolutely awed by them. Songs will trigger us. Places, smells, people, movies, clothes, and anything that serves as the slightest reminder of a more difficult time in our lives will trigger us. Yes, it can get petty, but we really can't control a trigger.
We don't know how to tell you what you can do to help us in the rare occasion that there is someone who wants to help. We may act like we're mad at you. We may act like we hate the world. Some of us do hate the world, some of us feel like the world hates us. Most of us just want to be happy and stable, which really isn't such a horrible desire. It's even less horrible to be sad when we cannot find the happiness and stability that we have spent a lifetime craving.
The only thing you can do is listen. If you love us then you must make a conscious effort to understand that our minds and emotions are different. We don't always reach out by screaming, " HELP ME, IM DYING INSIDE." Sometimes our cries are silent and hidden in song lyrics or a change in our daily actions. If you cannot recognize this or if you're incapable of understanding then the best thing you can do for us is to not increase the amount of doubt we have in ourselves.
A lot of times we need acknowledgment and reassurance. If you can look at us in the life we live and be confused by how we feel so low then we're probably doing okay for ourselves, but we can't see it. All we see is how much we could do better. We take failure so deeply to heart. In reality, everyone could always do better. Everyone could learn more. For as high on life as you believe you are, you can always go higher. This has to be viewed as opportunity and not an additional burden, which is something we struggle to establish a difference in.
Some of us may not have figured out yet what is "off" in our lives. We may be still struggling with blame and bad decisions. Some of us will never figure it out and we'll spend most of our lives alone, bitter, and resentful.
For however much progress we are able to make in becoming mentally healthy, we are completely set back when we lose a person we trust. The loss of someone can be death, a change in circumstances, or someone walking away. We grieve each of these losses the same.
If you can offer anything to your fellow human being, let it be understanding. We can't always put our problems and fears into complete and detailed explanations. Please don't force us to. If you tell us you love us then love us unconditionally or leave us be. Telling someone with mental and emotional instabilities to "suck it up"," you're doing it to yourself" , "stop feeling sorry for yourself", or any other form of shaming is the equivalent to emotional abuse and you may as well load the gun for us and hand it over as you walk away.
Love us when we tell you not to. Hold us even as we try to push you away. Understand us even while we struggle to understand ourselves.
