Since I was a little girl I recall how my life in many ways was about being tough, I am not sure if it was because of how my life evolved or how the circumstances developed themselves, but I have countless memories about hearing how I had to be strong, how I had to just ‘suck it up’ and keep moving, how I had to keep on going no matter what. As I have described some other times, being an only child did not fill me with the cliche privileges, my parents did a great job in making me understand not only the value of things, but in general how life was, they never sugar coated anything and let me live first hand all the experiences, with the rawness of the pain and the knowledge of the consequences. Sometimes I wish that in some of those difficult moments I would have had a comforting hand that said ‘No worries, it will get better’, instead of the ‘Well, suck it up and keep moving!”. I did feel sad sometimes, I wanted to express how much it hurt, how much it affected me, but I saw how the reaction was completely different of what I thought should be and I just dedicated to spread my feelings in pages of nonsense that I now call writing.
I remember the first notebook I used to start throwing what I felt inside trying to calm that burning sensation in my chest, it was an orange hardcover notebook, I have had it for school and since there was not much to write in that subject I decided to start jotting words, whatever came out of my hand, with no order or meaning. At first, I thought it was poetry, I was fascinated with the subject , so I gave it a try. I think I did good in some cases since there was a good response form the poems I took to school, but I felt that something was missing, it was too short, to ethereal to really satisfy the feeling of getting rid of that burn. Then I started to write about my emotions, blunt and frank, and since I was 14 the feelings where expressed in form of the wishes and dreams of a teenager looking to be loved. I wrote, I did not like what came out, but in that love-hate relationship I had with my own creation, I realized that writing was a way of me sharing all those feelings that I felt I was not allowed to share with anyone else.
I was a happy girl, I had a happy life and I did not want to see friends and share all these intense emotions, I was sure that people where not interested in knowing about them, so I smiled. When my parents fought and I felt so much in the middle, I smiled, when kids in school did not like me, I smiled, when life seemed to be gloomy, I smiled. But in the inside so much more was happening, so many things that people where not able to see or understand. The day I overheard the boy I liked say that I was ‘Amazing but he was not sure he wanted to be my boyfriend’ I smiled, and for the world I did not care, but inside, inside there was another story going on, I was hurt, there was a hole in my heart and I felt like that for days, but no one knew, I just smiled and said ‘It is fine’. Why? why did I never tell my best friend how much it hurt? why didn’t I just cry for a few days like a normal teenager in my room? why did I not eat all the chocolate ice cream available? Because I knew that as soon as I said at home what had happened, my parents where just going to answer: Life goes on!
And it does, but I know realize how hard it is for me to share those emotions any other way, how difficult it is for me to just say ‘I am sad’ and not smile, how to realize what is really going on inside without pretending, being strong and smiling, and sometimes making the huge mistake of dedicating my burning feelings to people or circumstances that really do not even have anything to do with it. I have attributed solitude to love, frustration to failure, sadness to circumstance and I have lacked in just shouting what is really going on inside. Maybe this new notebook that is not orange and that is being shared with the world has helped me realize what really goes on inside me. Perhaps the turns and falls of life have showed me that there is no need to pretend happiness when you do not feel like it. Maybe between getting to know me and knowing others I have realized that I have to just not suck it up and seek a little support from others. I am not completely there yet, but I have seen how I have shared when I do not want to and I see how my brain processes the emotions and tells me it is time to come clean with myself.
A few weeks ago I folded and told my dad how alone I felt for the first time after 5 years of always saying I was happy; and today I told a friend I was going to miss him and in the middle of my good vibes for his new life, I was feeling sad to see him go.
This post is dedicated to those who have allowed me to express and not judge, to make me realize that we all have bad moments and that it is in sharing where you can realize how you can really solve what goes on. And if you cannot solve it, at least the chat proved to be a better option than the lock down of the heart…
Stay tuned!