To Be Real

Hello my beautiful careless readers, long time no see, huh? I must admit, 31 is not proving to be as fun as 30. Can we rewind a year, por favor?

There’s been a lot of sad news and unexpected events over the past few months and that not only has shaken up my world but world of my net’s. We are growing up guys, and it kinda sucks? Reality checks have been thrown at us front and center and unfortunately, we can’t deny reality, even if we want to.

Truth is, I have been feeling quite sad lately and didn’t really feel up to writing much. I couldn’t really portray my happy self like usually do. But something changed in the past week and I thought: Life is hard, but only I can change for the better.

I feel these days people talk about mental health more openly and I would like to think that that’s the way forward. It is important to portray a happy picture of your life if that’s how it really is. But it should also be OK to raise your voice, digitally and offline, if you are not.

In the current social media era we live in, it is sometimes hard not to pretend we are happy all the time. That’s how it’s presented in front of us, right? Well, we all go through shit, we just purposely decide not to show it to the world.

It’s not the first time I hear somebody say how they feel their close friends are so happy all the time because they’ve seen it in pictures and videos but then reality it’s quite far from the truth.

Why do we do it? What’s behind of it all? I used to say to myself that I like to portray a happy image to the world because I feel I am not only encouraging myself to be that way but also, I hope I do so to others, and I stand by that. However, it is also important to show when I am not feeling OK, and I guess I’ve been a bit guilty of dismissing that.

It’s been a very difficult summer. I’ve been dealing with a sense of loss that I haven’t experience before and my anxiety levels have been off the roof lately. So much so I’ve been keeping an anxiety chart to track how I feel. I want to be better, but that also starts with me trying not to go stir crazy unnecessarily or going stir crazy but reflecting on it to understand what’s going on in my head and how to tackle it. Mental health is so complex. I’m just trying to make a bit of sense now and it is hard.

But hey, life is hard. And it isn’t fair. And it really hurts like hell sometimes. So much so you feel there’s no end to it. But if we focus on what is within our power to change for the better, we might.

I saw a quote that really inspired me today and I hope it inspires you too: when life gives you a hundred reasons to break down and cry, show life that you have a million reasons to smile and laugh. Let’s do that.

TCB xx