On Sharing, Waiting and Imperfection.

Before I share my story I want to mention something. Someone kinda close to me asked me why I write so much about my life and lived experiences, and encouraged me to write more technical posts. The thing though is that I have a lot of technical posts in my drafts that I lost motivation to complete because I feel like anyone can just google stuff and figure things out. I believe a topic only becomes interesting when there’s a lived experience/story to back it up. That’s why I write about my lived experiences so much. And honestly, most of my posts were written for me, it sounds weird but it’s the truth. I’ve legit lost count of the amount of times I’ve gone back to read my posts for encouragement. I just felt the need to put this out there, and with that being said, we can move on to the actual story.

I wrote a post earlier which I was going to title “I’m failing at life and I’m okay with it” but it never made it out of my drafts (and I don’t think it will for a while), and here’s the reason why. After I got past my bad academic season, I began excelling so much, I was almost unstoppable. Aced final exams with all distinctions and I think one credit, applied to two unis and I got into both of them, got scholarships I didn’t even need, graduated with first class honours, applied to one uni for my first masters and got in, eventually switched programs and applied to another Canadian Ivy league school and got in, got internship offers midway, then graduated with an excellent academic standing. My life has been moving so fast for as long as I can remember. I’ve been babygirling like crazy and things have always fallen in place for me. So imagine my surprise when life started showing me otherwise. I made specific plans and had specific goals I needed to achieve by a specific date and I could not seem to get it together — goals that ordinarily shouldn’t take this long were just not materializing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have faced disappointments in the past but this one was definitely the greatest. I hadn’t faced any major disappointment I genuinely cared about like this so I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had hinged the rest of my year on these plans and it just wasn’t coming through, my mind could not comprehend it. I had never had to slow down or wait for things to materialize, infact things were always moving at a faster pace than I could comprehend and I constantly had to catch up to it all. At first I thought I had offended God, and he was punishing me for some sins I had committed in the past. Then I thought I wasn’t putting enough effort, then I thought I wasn’t smart enough to achieve the goals I set, then I spent some days crying, and then I kinda gave up. Now, I can’t tell you specific details (I feel like I’m already oversharing as-is) but all you need to know is this; the wait is part of life and how you wait matters.

I learnt the hard way that failure, disappointment and delay are all part of life, but that’s not the core of the story. The wait is going to come whether you like it or not, you will struggle for things whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, it’s just part of life. It’s crazy though, because I was taught that bad things only happen to bad people and I am a relatively okay person, I definitely didn’t deserve what was happening to me. Also, I was taught that the best way to deal with negative things is to suppress them with positive things but that is a pure scam. It almost drove me into a state of depression. I realized the hard way that it is okay to feel and acknowledge negative emotions, it’s what you do with the emotion that really matters. What makes it all the more funnier is that people seem to believe I have a glamorous life. I once had someone tell me I didn’t deserve to get something because, “I was too perfect and my life was too perfect”, it’s been almost 4 years and I still don’t understand what she meant by that. One thing I do know is that I changed that day. Since that day, I’ve felt the need to preserve this notion of a perfect life.

So when faced with a life challenge, the norm for me was to either bear it alone or tell one person closest to me because I thought opening up and being vulnerable to someone was a sign of weakness. And it was so funny because I wouldn’t tell the person everything, I would twist the story in a way that makes it seem so cool and perfectly normal. I just couldn’t comprehend how and why people will come out in the open to say they are broke, unemployed or going through something. I just couldn’t comprehend it. “Why would you tell anyone what’s troubling you? Can’t you just resolve it on your own by yourself? These people don’t even care about you and whatever it is you are going through.” These were the thoughts in my head whenever I see people post their issues. The funny thing though is that I would help out, in any way possible, I would find a way to relieve this person of their distress but when it was my turn, I would suffer it alone and in silence because I’m a “strong” person.

This pain hit different though, I started having anxiety attacks — something that was so foreign to me, I didn’t even know how to deal with it. I neared depression even, the black hole of sadness pulling me closer and closer to its core with every passing day. I was enduring this pain alone and I was seriously suffering, it was taking a toll on my health and overall quality of life, and I let it overpower me. I let it because I wanted to be the “strong” girl everyone knew me as — I felt the need to keep up with the perfect life the world saw. It’s crazy though, a lot of people say “Yeah, I know I’m not perfect” when they mean the opposite. I find that it’s usually said in a way that allows for humble bragging but I digress. The truth is life isn’t perfect, and that’s okay. Life sucks and that is perfectly okay. Christian or not, things will never always go according to plan because that’s the circle of life. The great 6god once said “we lose some and win some, as long as the outcome is income” and I constantly remind myself of that line. Very life changing line if you ask me, Drake would make a really fantastic life coach in my opinion.

So what’s the point of this post? To encourage someone that thinks hiding his/her problems makes him/her strong, ( p.s; it doesn’t). It is so important that you have someone to share your problems with, people you trust of course but sometimes sharing it with strangers helps too because you don’t know who is who. Has things fallen into place for me now? Nope, not yet. Am I very far from my goals? Yep, absolutely, but you know what? It’s okay, I’m okay with it. I’ve learnt so much about myself, more than I would have if my plans had fallen into place and I’m so grateful for it. You know that proverb, “ A problem shared is a problem half solved?”, well it’s so true because sometimes knowing that there are people that care about you, believe in you and are on your side is really all you need to keep pushing. So please please please, share your problems with people. Tell us what’s up, what’s going on — and if someone trusts you enough to tell you what’s up, have sense enough to provide the support and confidentiality they need. No one’s life is perfect and that is okay, it doesn’t have to be. There’s no need to kill yourself over something that isn’t even real. You will fail at a lot of things in life, but you will also succeed at a lot of things, balance is everything.

I was only able to find true peace when I poured my soul out to people, so what’s holding you back?

P.S: This post is very rough and unedited, but sometimes that’s okay. Perfection is overrated anyway lol.