With all the recent events (COVID-19, school closure, etc.) it’s hard for me to keep an optimistic outlook on life, but I really am trying. There are so many people in life-threatening situations all across the world, and it hurts to even think about it. As this goes on all across the world, it’s given me quite a mental wake up call. Never before have I spent so much time completely on my own. Before the pandemic, I spent little to no time alone; and if I did, I made sure it was in a public place. I’m sure there was a deeper fear hidden beneath, but I tried to ignore it. If I didn’t spend much time alone, I wouldn’t have time to overthink.
Since I was young, I often felt anxious, and I overthought almost everything in my life. As time went on, I learned to absolutely hate this part of myself. It mainly complicated situations and created fears that should have been nonexistent. As I grew older, I learned to cope by spending an excessive amount of time preoccupied, oftentimes with a companion. It usually did prove to be effective; all I wanted was to not feel the distress of being alone. But it created a different problem: I started to become a bit numb to things and feelings, and I was a bit smitten over it. When all you do is overthink, silence is such a peaceful sound.
But, the pandemic happened all at once, taking away everything that used to keep my mind silent. How do you go from spending almost no time with yourself to spending seemingly all of your time with yourself? I think somewhere along the way I fell too in love with the silence, and I lost touch with who I was. In a way, the silence allowed me to reach what I thought was (at least at the time) my fullest potential. It allowed me to pursue things and experience things that I wouldn’t have otherwise experienced. But with this extra me-time, it’s helped me re-evaluate if all these distractions actually take parts away from who I am.
With this extra time figuring out where I’m at in my life and what I want out of it, I’ve realized that it’s okay to care too much about the people in your life (even if it’s more than them). It’s okay to have a dream even though you have no idea how to get there (successfully). It’s okay to embrace every part of who you are instead of just the parts society has deemed desirable. This pandemic has allowed me to touch base with myself, and I hope it’s allowed the same for you. It’s so important for us right now to stay safe and take care of ourselves physically and mentally. In our lives, we get so caught up in what’s immediate and right in front of us that, at least for me, it becomes so challenging to look at the bigger picture and know your worth. I hope that for both of us, even if we go back to our lives that we deem as “normal”, we take the feelings that we have right now with us. What’s happening in the world leaves me scared and afraid, but at least I feel like my true self again.