The last few months haven’t been the best for me and I have been struggling a lot within me. I had written this post a few months ago, on stumbling upon it I realized not much has changed since then. I still feel low, lifeless, and numb.Today was my birthday and I still felt lost, hollow lifeless. After a lot of ruminating, I have decided to talk about it. It is okay not to be okay…I am pretty sure I am not the only one who feels as if she is being left behind while the entire world is rushing towards a common goal, a goal no one is actually aware of but everyone wants to be in the rat race.
It has made me feel I am not strong enough to face the hardships that come my way daily. Being successful, being the winner, being at the apogee in your career, that’s all you will get if you open the Internet. Why are people scared to show their emotional side too? No one gets it easy, it takes a lot of hard work and sweat to reach the top but why is it when they do reach it they pretend like it was just bound to happen and never talk of the hardships?
Take an example of social media, you will see people posting pictures only of how happy or ‘privileged’ they are. I myself have been a social media blogger but I have stopped using it last 3-4 months cause it made me feel very low about myself, it made me feel not good at what I was producing although I used to put in several hours of work into it. I was struggling a lot in my professional and personal life due to which seeing everyone else happy was breaking me down, or at least the notion of being happy. Every day for me had become a struggle.
I was working hard every single day but I still felt lost and like a loser in the end. I could not fake it anymore by putting on a smile on social media while I went to sleep crying alone. I was scared if I spoke about how I felt I would be called weak and people would not look up to me and I did not want to be felt like a disappointment.
The Internet has become so competitive and ruthless that all people want to talk about is how easy it is to be famous/successful and if you aren’t, you are losing out on a lot of things. I agree you need to work hard to achieve better things, but is it really at the cost of you constantly comparing yourself to people you see online? and in the process of WANTING to get what they have you forget to live your present? Why cant people be true and open up? Why can’t we normalize that it is okay to feel low, it is okay to have bad days, it is okay to feel like you are not getting what you want.
Why are we humans always so skeptical about showing our hard days/ bad days? You actually don’t know how much you might help someone just by sharing a genuine story of your struggle before you became who you are today. Several people are out there who are probably on the same path as you, facing the same hardships but where do we as people go wrong? We only post our successes online not the problems due to which when another person who is on the same path as you sees that you succeeded so well without any failures will begin to doubt himself if was he even meant to do it.
I would like to be more vocal about this issue from now on and I would like to say It is okay not to be okay. You are a beautiful person who deserves all the happiness in life but sometimes there are hindrances along the way and that is just life. But we should stop this toxic display only of success and open up more about us as humans and about our emotions.
I know sometimes they say just talk it out but the truth is no one will ever understand what exactly you are going through and a person will understand you once twice but the fifth time will just say you are being extra. This is why I would like to create a community for all of us beautiful souls out there who want to make this world a better place by being more realistic and showing future generations that it is normal to break down and doing so doesn’t make you weak.
Lots of love,
Shriya Pandita