A small majority of people who know me (friends, former friends, acquaintances, and more) would say I’m a complicated person when it comes to my emotions. And with how I handle them, it can get quite overwhelming.  

This might not be as helpful or interesting for a whole lot of you, but if you feel the same way I feel then let’s talk?

Stressed Out

Ever since I could understand what emotions and feelings are, I’ve been drowning in them. Even before I could comprehend what sadness is, it would tuck me in bed and kiss me goodnight. It has always been hard to deal with my feelings for my family and friends. I detest it, quite a lot.  

I was overwhelmed, afraid, and quite frankly, just confused about everything. Now I don’t want to say that I was alone and had no one. I had people who loved and cared about me. I still do. But there are times where I would willingly push people away, and that would only make things worse. Yet, I still do this day, do it. 

Not only has this had a huge impact on how I react to things, but also how someone perceives me. Why? Because I’m constantly anxious or feeling low. My mood swings so quick, no one knows how I would react next. I call this being spontaneous (sarcasm), they call it being selfish, or miserable. Do I blame them? No. Should I? Possibly.

Don’t Let Me Get Me

I know this sounds cliche, but this is exactly why I started writing. I couldn’t escape my thoughts, but all I wanted to do was run. I wanted to, no, I needed to get away from this chaos that kept brewing in my head. I didn’t think it mattered if I talked about how I felt. Even now, I feel like if I talk about myself I wouldn’t stop. Not because I’m self-centered or because everything has to be about me. But because it always felt like I was never heard. I’ve repressed how I feel for so many years, my fault, that now when I have to express it, it’s a wave of emotions. And not everyone can handle it, I barely can.

And solely because of this, I realized that while I didn’t want to talk about how I feel I could write about it. I was that kid who poured her heart out in her diary. I know for a fact that if I could read it now, I’d probably want to burn it. But growing up, I always made my family cards for different occasions, wrote poems, even narrated stories. And somewhere between horribly written birthday cards and naive diary entries, I turned into an angsty teen. 

Up until a certain age, I was a happy kid. I loved going to school, I loved participating in every outdoor activity, and I would dance my heart out during practice. But even I couldn’t understand how fun turned to anxiety and friends turned into bullies. I still assume it was partly my fault, but the bullying didn’t do much to my self-esteem. So a few of my poems on here are exactly what my year old self was thinking about back then. And as expected, I want to burn them all. 

But I remember, I started writing a lot more. I’d show it to a classmate, and it was solely because of her encouragement that I continued writing. It didn’t matter if I was happy, sad, anxious, or just felt lost; I would always write about it and then put it away. Even when I was writing about it, I didn’t want anyone to know. It was more for myself than them. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t afraid about how raw every single one of them was. 

I continued to hate school long after I left, but even though it was somewhat traumatic for me it pushed me to write more. Explore more. Yet somehow once I left, I barely wrote. And it wasn’t like I was doing any better. I was still this angsty teen who tried hard to be edgy.  I never considered managing a blog of my own until a friend from college suggested it. She called it a very public diary. Even though I wasn’t all too confident about it, I started putting my poems on there. 

This only made me write more because while it did help with my emotions, it also made me realize my love for it. I never stopped composing poems, but I occasionally put them up. I was always scared about someone calling me out, or maybe I was just afraid that it was real because I wrote about and acknowledged it. And maybe I still am.

Liability

I make it sound like I had things in control and writing probably did help to some extent. But here’s the thing, I was and probably still am a people pleaser. I loved pretending like everything was fine. All I wanted to do was make my friends happy, because in my twisted head it would be the equivalence of my happiness. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t.  

My anxiety and sadness would slowly increase with each passing day, and I wasn’t doing anything to help myself. I would ignore it and brush it under the rug. Only to have it blow up in my face at the worst possible time. Because of how I kept avoiding my feelings, they’ve always got the best of me.  

Not only did this affect my personal life, but it hurt my professional life too. And by the time I realised what it did, it was too late. I had already hurt a lot of people, because I couldn’t stop hurting myself. I still have days where I feel like whatever I do, it will never be good enough. I would never be a better writer, I would never be good enough for that one person I like, I would never be good enough for my friends. But what I’ve understood is that I will never be good enough for myself. And that hurts. 

I continue to write, and this blog will always be my very public diary. It has transformed into a means to escape because I’m afraid of letting my walls down. I’m afraid of feeling vulnerable and accepting my emotions, even if it is to myself. I know that I have let this define me, but what saddens me is that even though I run away from everything; I will never be able to escape this.

Much More Than That

I have let a lot of people, including myself, put myself down so often that I cannot see beyond the negative. I will never be able to accept a genuine compliment, regardless of who it is from. It still does. We are our worst critics, but I’ve taken this to heart; because I never stop bringing myself down. 

I always put myself down in regards to my blog, my appearance, and especially when my anxiety gets the best of me. However, this has only encouraged others to walk over me, and I always let them. With how low my self-esteem is, I would welcome every unnecessary opinion people threw my way. 

But that isn’t how things should be. I know they shouldn’t be. But if I don’t learn to respect myself, I can never expect anyone else to. And that’s something I have been working hard on. I still run away from my emotions, I still have walls higher than a stoner in Kasol, and I will always be afraid about coming off as a vulnerable, anxious girl. 

There is nothing wrong with being selfish about your emotions ever so often, as long as you can handle them without hurting anyone in the process, including yourself. 

The idea revolving around this blog has been brewing in my head for a long time. However, I didn’t want to come across as a self-righteous person telling you how to handle yourself in a similar situation. There was also this fear of oversharing, and I might have. But I wanted to talk about how I feel. And if you feel the same way, then you’re not alone.  

I’m still working on how I handle my emotions. I may not talk about it as much, but I occasionally write about it just so I don’t explode. However, I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I am a selfish, insecure, and extremely anxious woman who needs to fall in love with herself all over again. And guess what? I may be ready to take that plunge. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this! If you’re looking for content like this, you can check out more of my work here.