Keep your chin up.

 It’s hard to balance emotion. You are told to feel, and feel everything. But you are taught to hide away the pain, to suck it up and keep on going. 

That works for a little while until it feels like there’s so much inside that it’s going to explode. It’s like when you shake a bottle of pop viciously and then open the cap, it all comes out at once and continues until there is nothing left inside.  

How do you unlearn to feel the things you need to feel when they happen so they don’t bottle up?

 From childhood, you bottle up those times you didn’t feel enough because kids in the schoolyard wouldn’t play with you, to the moments when you are told you are a brat. After all, you are just trying to express how you feel. So you bottle it all up until it starts to seep out of the cracks. The cracks grow and grow because of the pressure until you are so cracked you feel like at any time you could break open and there would be nothing left of you. 

The same is with dreams, you bottle up all of these things that you feel are too big for you, too much because you fear that the same people who told you that your feelings are too much will say that your dreams are as well. It gets to the point where you give up on your dreams because what’s the point? So you settle for things that you never wanted, and you're told that you are doing so well at the job that you hate.

 Because from the outside it looks like you are happy, but underneath the pressure is still growing and you're still cracking and breaking open because you learned to listen to everyone else’s voices before your own. The voice that used to be so clear, that was yours is now distant. It's the voice in the background. 

Until you see something that someone does that you wish you could do, you begin to envy them and maybe you start to hate them because they are living the dream that you always wanted. Whatever that may be, you feel ashamed and guilty because you don't want to hate someone for living their dream, your dream. 

You just want to be brave enough to break away from the shackles of others’ opinions to do the same for yourself. The guilt eats at you, and the shame consumes you until you feel dirty all the time. No matter how much you shower, how much you self-cleanse, or how much perfume you put on, you still feel dirty.  You scrub your skin raw in the bath and the shower, until you're a wet pile of skin and bones on the floor crying out all of the pain and sadness that is bursting at the seams.  

Who's there to hold you? Except you. 

It’s hard to find real connections because of pushing down the feelings, the ambitions, the excitement. Those feelings are foreign to you, you numb yourself with alcohol and cover it up with face masks and bubble baths telling yourself you're taking care of yourself with the superficial but yet you still feel empty because you're not allowing yourself to FEEL.

  Relationships are hard, the people you do have in your life are tainted by the unworthiness you feel, you question if they really care about you, and your mind gets scary. It gets dark and you push those people away. You self-sabotage and self-destruct and it seems like it’s this endless black hole of sadness. You feel empty, this whole happiness thing that everyone seems to find so easily is so hard for you. Your base emotion is sadness. And that makes you feel more like a failure because you're doing all the right things to feel better, but yet you still don’t. You can’t figure out why every friendship you have feels like it ends like there is a certain time where you can’t go forward anymore because you shut them out. You shut yourself out to the point where that voice is a little whisper. 

But then you meet that person or see that piece of art, or visit the ocean for the first time and for a little while you feel alive again, you feel better, you start doing things that make you happy again, genuinely happy. You start really taking care of yourself, you start going for walks and yoga and start painting and drawing and doing the things you used to do when you were little and you feel like you’ve finally escaped this cycle of sadness. And for a little, while you do, your ups feel so high that you are flying on wings of self-love and happiness and inner peace. 

There is hope for what you are going through. In the darkest times, I know it may not feel that way. I know that it may feel like life may also feel this hopeless, this darkness. 

I don’t have all the answers, I’m still going through this cycle. I do know that you are not alone. 

Try to do the things that make you happy, talk to and surround yourself with the people who make you feel alive and happy. Don't listen to what others think is best for you, don't tune out that voice until it’s a whisper, and listen to it every time you get a chance because that voice knows you because it is you and you know why you're here,  you are magic.

 Don’t give up, keep going.