My mother often reminds me that I'm too hard on myself. I'm tired of hearing it because I know she's right.
I accept responsibility for almost everything that happens to me in my life — even when it's not necessarily my "fault". Guiding myself in the direction of success and overcoming challenges instills me with agency, confidence, and pride. On the flip side, I feel like my own greatest obstacle because I often fail to live up to my own expectations.
The last six months have been the most challenging of my entire life. I've been navigating multiple major life changes at once: a new job, a long-distance move, a breakup, and — most soul-crushing of all — being ghosted by a dearly beloved friend.
All of that at once has shaken my stability in a way I've never quite experienced before. I'm usually able to keep myself controlled and pick up the pieces, but this broke me. While I feel things are headed in a positive direction some days, other days leaving my bed feels impossible and my only relief is sleeping or comfort eating. I feel enormous internal pressure to overhaul my diet and get my gym habit going again, but I also know from experience that trying to do too much at once is the quickest ticket to making everything worse. I'm still barely scratching the surface of learning my new job, exploring my new neighborhood, unpacking my things, navigating the emotional turmoil of perceived abandonment... Maybe that's more than enough to deal with right now.
So for now I'm just trying to... accept myself at my present state and gently rebuild some healthier habits, outlets, and routines. Much easier said than done, but I'm getting there. I think.
Despite everything that's happened lately, I fundamentally believe that my greatest strength is my ability to be vulnerable regardless of how deeply I hurt. I'm trying to hone this ability even further by using this space as an outlet, even though exposing myself like this scares me. I think many people are going through similar struggles but keep it locked inside themselves because they are afraid of showing weakness in what can feel like a wading pool of sharks. I've been there too; in some ways, I feel like I've been hiding for ages. So I hope I can reach people who feel alone like I do. Community can be healing in such a transformative way.