It is with great sadness that I had to say goodbye to so
many amazing and influential people that I met and rekindled relationships with
this past weekend. With that sadness also comes great joy that I was able to
get to know people and allow them to affect my life in a positive way. It seems
all too common that people become individuals and work to not let other people
into their lives. I often find myself trying to create a façade of strength and
independence by pretending to not need anyone else. In my mind, this shows new
acquaintances that I am not only mysterious but secure in who I am. Although
these things are true, they often push people away and leave them confused and
unwilling to give me a second thought. This creates an environment where people
are not able to connect with me even if they wanted to.
Even though I am never in need of new friends, it is
important to make an effort to smile and get to know complete strangers. As a
semi-introvert, it takes an enormous amount of energy to make general
meaningless conversation with strangers while remaining welcoming and
accepting. Since I know how hard will be, I often just hide behind my façade in
order to remain comfortable, convincing myself that if other people want to
meet me, they will initiate conversation. I cannot think of a single situation
in which it turned out that way. I float through life without any varying
emotions, hoping to maintain my current level of content-ness.
As it becomes easier to block out negative emotions in an
attempt to remain happy, it becomes more difficult to realize how it is also
restricting my ability to experience true happiness. Letting myself feel
sadness is very difficult for me, but as I found myself on the verge of tears
last night, feeling completely hopeless and alone, I realized that I was
surrounded by people who love me and would be willing to help me through this.
Now that I have realized how supportive my family is, it is up to me to lean on
them by laying it all out there. No one can help me through problems if I am
unwilling to accept that I need help and seek it out.
The past fifteen to twenty months have been filled with life
changes, new challenges, and problems that I have kept confidential. I pride
myself in being able to independently handle any problems that find me, but as
I grow older, different types of problems start to emerge; problems that are
not able to be solved and may lead to more and more problems of a similar
variety. Since I feel that I can solve anything, I convince myself that I do
not need other people’s help. What I have failed to realize is that other
people cannot solve my problems, they can just help me discover the severity of
the problems. It helps me to hear problems out loud and maybe give different perspective.
It also helps to hear that I am not alone in my struggles. Many people have a
vast amount of shared experiences that definitely have their differences, but
are identical at the core.
Since this blog is primarily for me, I have allowed myself
to bleed my thoughts onto the page without much concern for continuity or
purpose; but if you took the time to read, I hope that you could also get
something out of this.
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