the funk
Hey folks, long time no talk, aye?
I'd be lying if I said I didn't forget that I had this blog for a hot minute. Between balancing college classes and my dwindling social life, I haven't really had the chance to sit down and write. Then, a few days ago I guess I finally hit my breaking point and ditched all of my studying (big mistake, by the way) and wrote 20+ pages in my journal.
Well here I am, back and ready to get spooky just in time for Halloween and nothing is scarier than oversharing on the internet.
So here I am, ready to knock your socks off!!
I told myself I wouldn't write this post until I pulled myself together, but, the truth is, i'll never be altogether. I'll be arriving at my deathbed in a million itty bitty pieces and at least half of them will be late because they thought they had enough time to grab coffee first.
Call it a mid-college crisis or whatever you want, but I've been in what I can only refer to as a "funk" lately. Life has been throwing me curveballs left and right and I can't seem to catch a break. Simplest terms: I'm exhausted. In just the past couple of weeks I have attended a funeral, been reminded once again that my dad is the only man in my life I can completely rely on, drowned multiple times in school work, and missed the absolute heck out of my parents.
The silver lining here, and the point of this post, is that I've noticed something different in the way that I handle pain this time around. In past heartbreaks or hardships, I've let myself become enveloped by the pain. I'd throw myself a week long pity party and listen to angsty gnash songs on repeat for hours. That's just how it was; I'd eventually dry out my tear ducts and clean the freezer out of banana pudding ice cream.
So when my heart took two right hooks to the left ventricle in the same day, I was expecting to collapse inward on myself. Oh, and I did. It was a tough day. Then when I thought I didn't have any more tears left in me, I took my head off my mascara stained pillow, looked in the mirror, and said to myself, "Yo, Em, look at yourself. We've been here before. Do you really want to go down that road again?"
And I looked down that road of sweatpants and puffy eyes and I thought about some things:
The key here is to just take it like a wo(man). The longer you put off feeling pain, the harder it is to deal with once you finally let it in. A good cry is therapeutic, don't fight me on this. So when you want to cry, cry. Rather than looking at the situation as one giant middle finger from life, try and see how you can learn and grow from it. No, that's not easy, and it takes a lot of practice and mental strength, but you can do it.
I'm realizing that some of the toughest parts of my life have shown me how to handle worse situations. They've taught me how to handle guilt, anxiety, and grief among many other things. I used to regret or wish that parts of my past had never happened, but, as cheesy as it sounds, I wouldn't give them up even if I could. I'm stronger than I used to be and that doesn't come from ignoring problems or the handful of times I've gone to the gym.
Healing isn't all ice cream and Nicholas Sparks movies and retweets from rapper parody twitter accounts. It's learning how to acknowledge the hurt without letting it consume you, taking responsibility for the part you play in every relationship versus victimizing yourself, and a whole lot of late night phone calls with your dad. Pain isn't pretty. It's ugly. But, then again, no one ever looks pretty after working out, but it's good for you. Pain is too.
One thing that I remind myself a lot is this: not everything that feels good is good, and not everything that feels bad is bad. When you miss something that was toxic, remember that no matter how good it might have felt-it wasn't healthy for you. And when you're hurting over life's latest curveball, try and change your perspective and look at it objectively: Why did this happen? If this happens again, what would I do differently? How does this change the way I look at certain things? What have I learned about myself? About other people?
Pain is one of the few things that we all consistently go through in our lives no matter how much we try to avoid it, and it's important to develop strategies to manage and understand that pain at a young age. That's why I ultimately wrote this-to try and help out anyone out there that I can. In no way can you just suddenly "stop" hurting, but we can work with it the best we can.
None of this is easy, and if you're out there reading this (if people still even read this blog) and you're also in a funk: I'm thinking about you right now and your heart may be heavy, but I know that you are strong enough to carry it with all it's grief. Take a deep breath-
you got this.
