All of us at some point in time have been scarred. It doesn’t have to be scars that came from a toxic romantic relationship. It could just be from our best friend. It could be from our family, from their behaviour. It could be from anything.
There is always this time in our life where we wish we could be saved by someone or something. We wish that we could just have someone to fill up with our thoughts. We wish there was someone who could commiserate. But, we look around and we’re deserted. No sign of people who are ready to listen to us. We feel exhausted. We feel defeated.
And it would be stupid to start off with “but the thing we don’t realise is…” How the heck are we supposed to realise anything when our mind keeps going back to the person who engages us in negative thoughts about ourselves. It is ridiculous to expect someone to move on in a jiffy, put on a big smile and conquer the world.
Sometimes, we are afraid. Afraid that if we think too positive, negativity will surround. Every happiness seems to be a calm before the storm. And so, we stop being happy. We stop accepting happiness and related feelings. We joke about love. We profess materialism. And this is normal. It is like those YouTube searches that get stored and show us recommended videos as per our previous experience or choice. Our mind has a reason or two to believe that happiness is always followed by melancholy. And we just stop.
Romantically speaking, the other type of afraid is to be afraid of falling out of love with someone who isn’t yours in the first place. You want to continue to love them even if you don’t get it back, or even better, you just don’t want the other person to love you back. This is because you have stopped accepting elating feels. You have stopped comprehending how to react when someone loves you back. You don’t want to deal with anything of the kind. You just want to love from afar. You see, the thing about love is, it is as scary as it is beautiful. It can take you to the highest point and throw you down in a matter of seconds. It can make you bipolar.
The commonality between love and depression is that they’re both addictive. Once you love someone, you don’t want to lose hold and once you get used to staying alone,well, you come down to misanthropy. When in love, you will love the nostalgia it brings with itself and when in depression, which usually follows love, you will love the sad feeling and consequently disregard happiness.
Now, the thing here to be noted is that sometimes, rather all the time, a realisation has to be brought that every kind of time passes, every kind of wound heals. But if you keep replaying and re-replaying those scenes in your mind, wouldn’t you be inflicting new wounds? How will you ever heal if you keep harming yourself? But, but, but…the thing is…you don’t know how to stop it. You keep seeing those flashes again and again hearing the same words and worsening your condition as you hear them.
So, how do you deal with this?
1) Don’t force yourself not to think. Think about it if your mind takes you there. Look at the clock, when it’s been five minutes, then force yourself to stop and concentrate on what you were doing. Try to lessen the time from five minutes to zero minutes but gradually, do not rush into it. Take time.
2) Talk to yourself. Okay, I know this sounds weird and you think that you will probably look demented, but seriously, talk to yourself about it. You are your own therapist. No psychiatrist or psychologist can understand your situation better than you do. Self-cure lasts the longest.
Moving on…
You are in a situation which is urging you to cry. Maybe you’re nostalgic or sad, the main thing is, you want to cry and you just can’t. You feel like you can but when you scrunch up your face to let those tears fall out, you feel tired and you don’t feel any tears building up. As a result, your feelings get bottled up and you have a hard time getting over those emotions. This is because you have been used to keeping your feelings inside of you this whole time. Earlier you refused to cry when your body wanted to and now your body refuses to cry when you want to. It’s simple payback…
Dealing with this is a little difficult and takes a lot of time.
But you can start off by writing. Not on a daily basis. Just whenever you’re angry or want to cry, grab any piece of paper and scribble down how you feel. And don’t worry about not being able to describe how you feel. Just scatter some words that may relate to how you feel. Then, go into a bathroom or a secluded place where no one can hear you. Take that piece of paper, read it out aloud to yourself and then tear it into bits and pieces and throw it into the bin.
You see, feelings are scary, no doubt. They are elating but they can be degrading as well. But you also need to know that the best person to help you deal with this is you; because no one else knows what dilemma you’re in and what kind of tight shoes are you trying to fit in. They just don’t know. They may offer ways to help or emotional support but they can’t get into your mind and tune it for you, that is something you have to build up the guts for and go it alone.
It is tough. It is hard. You may want to give up. But you should know that life is a rocky boat and you’re only getting started, there’s much more to life that you could’ve ever thought. Life is very long and we are always young, the day you realise this, you won’t be needing anything or anyone other than you and then negative feelings will stop to matter. You will numb yourself to negativity just as you did earlier with positivity.
I won’t use the word happier because I feel it’s overrated, but I can assure you that you will feel at home, again, with yourself…in your skin, perfectly holding up to challenges and sailing through the storm like you do through a smooth sea.
