When I started university, I decided to start living for real this time. While the bad feelings about myself were still there, I had to make an active and conscious decision to ignore those parts of me that screamed to go back to how things were. I'm proud to say I stuck through. I started actively hanging out with friends, participating in hobbies, showing up when my presence was called for, and worked diligently towards a future in my course without the expectation for perfection. Not for any fantastic job, but just for the chance to prove to myself that what I thought to be so inherently wrong about me was nothing more than a high-form of self-gaslighting. 

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The more I thrust myself out there in the world and the more I started to get to know more people, It came as a revelation that I, infact, was most certainly not alone in these negative feelings I had for myself. I got to talking with many university students about mental health struggles. I saw the immense relief in their faces as the pent up emotion they had kept for themselves poured out like a dam who's walls had stored far too much rain. I heard words that echoed my own experiences. I saw the strong, stony, hard exterior of someone I could never imagine dealing with mental health problems crumble into an intense sputtering of self-doubt. I saw how their openness to that was the greatest display of strength I had seen from them. I told them so, and to this day this person reaches out every once in a while to check how I'm doing too. Every time we meet, that hard exterior that was once their given default state had become something warm and receptive. They had transformed into someone that had come to accept themselves as enough. 

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Now, when I walk around my rainy town, it doesn't even take me a deep conversation to spot the hidden turmoil plastered on the faces of those going to and from university, work or wherever. The look of pretending that you are okay. The sighs of exhaustion. The blaring of sad music in their air pods. The foreboding walk to a place that doesn't feel like home. The silent struggle that reminded me of my former self.

 

It makes me wonder how many of us still carry our burdens alone, all the while thinking that no one will truly understand? How many of us wear a happy face and persevere just to fit into a job or a friend group or to not worry our loved ones? I believe we live in a mental health epidemic that thrives in the silence of its sufferers. I find it is the breaking of that silence that unites people and builds connection. I believe a big problem with our modern culture is the wide-spread ideal of maintaining an unbreakable, strong, hyper-individualistic appearance while never showing your weaknesses to anyone. I believe many of us do this because often we are told that we should be happy with what we have. We think to ourselves that we have no right to feel this way because there are others who have it worse. While that may be true, I believe discrediting and taking your baggage for granted is one of the worst paths through life and leads to a perpetual state of identity-paralysis.

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With that, my goal here is to be the change that I desire to see in the world.  To create a community of like minded individuals who are open about their problems. I'm here to show people that we should not avoid the abyss in our souls and instead embrace it. To lean into the fear of knowing how deep it goes. To lean into the uncertainty of expressing something within ourselves that we may and truly feel so wrong for sharing. To rejoice at having come out the other side with new found knowledge, wisdom and acceptance for ourselves. To find people who feel the same.

 

I used to think that real change was hopeless. I used to believe that the past defined who I was destined to be in the future. I felt powerless and without control. But all it takes is a slight mental shift to realize that everything you want for yourself is still within your grasp. Don't get me wrong, It sounds simple but is by no means easy. I still live with that fear everyday of being viewed as "Mr. struggle". I dreaded writing this for the longest time because apart of me is still afraid of revealing my true self to the world, sharing my weaknesses and misconstruing my experiences as an attempt at validation or pity. But perfectionism is not the goal. Self-expression is. I denied myself that for so long, but worse, I denied the people in my life the real me too.

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It's apparent to me that real change needs to happen if we ever wish to solve these issue for ourselves. This post for me is one big leap into the conviction that this may be the path towards that change I desire for myself and all of us. I will treat this blog as a documentation of that process.

Inevitably on this path, you and I will fail, backslide, slip back into old negative thought patterns and question whether changing is really worth it. But remember that healing is not linear, nor is it pretty. What matters is that you get back up in the end and decide to try again. 

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Thank you for reading. I hope to see you around!

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