At some point in high school – when I was a lost teenager enamored by the concept of labels as a way to try to make sense of my existence – I had decided that I would be a hippie.
It was a dramatic 180 from the label under which I had previously fallen – emo kid. I lived for band tees and skinny jeans, would have teased my hair if straightening it in Florida humidity wasn’t a pointless endeavor, and had an iPod full of songs that told tales of pain and suffering over heavy drums and raucous guitars. Hippies, on the other hand, wore colors as bright as the music they listened to, saw the beauty in life and advocated for positive change. They were the complete opposite of the supposedly darker alternative world I had been subscribed to, but alternative nonetheless (which was, of course, important to teenage me).
Why did I want to make such an arbitrary personality change? This was yet another effort to find happiness. Despite an outwardly sunny demeanor, I was not a happy person. I struggled with depression and had a journal full of tear-stained pages demanding to know what was wrong with me, why couldn’t I just be happy? It seemed to come so naturally to everyone else! Well, at least I thought so in my naivety and self-deprecation. But I felt that I did have evidence to support this notion. When it was apparent that I was sullen, there were people that would tell me to simply, “cheer up, it’s not all so bad! Others have it worse than you! What could you possibly have to be sad about?”
I acknowledged that, in a way, they weren’t wrong. I had a roof over my head, food to eat, a middle class family that loved me dearly and supported me. Indeed, what could I possibly have had to have been sad about? I didn’t know. I could never really answer that question, not until I was an adult who received a painfully late diagnosis for Bipolar II. Now I know that those heavy feelings weren’t exactly in my control. It wasn’t a matter of simply getting over it – I needed a form of help I didn’t even have the words for at that time. So, I sought any glimmer of happiness in trends and labels and anything that seemed to have people that had that joy I was so lacking. It never really worked – I could call myself by a different name, but the sadness would remain.
While I understand in hindsight that those telling me to cheer up were only trying to help me, even if in a misguided way, those words were ultimately toxic to my wellbeing. It felt demeaning to my struggles. To be told that my life wasn’t so bad despite a crushing sense of doom and depression inflicted damage I’m still trying to undo today. I grew up to believe that I was fundamentally wrong, that I was broken for not being able to find happiness in the abundance around me when everyone and everything told me that it should have been a simple thing to accomplish.
A neverending stream of positivity in life is highly unlikely and unsustainable. To live is to experience the constant change of our personal lives and the world, and this will inevitably always include burdens and challenges and pain as much as it will include joy and love and positivity. We do ourselves a disservice if we assume otherwise. Yes, there are those who seem to have such beautiful and perfect lives splashed across social media, or those who always seem to have it together whenever you see them. There are those that may act like it’s completely unbelievable that you should be struggling at all when you could just, you know, not! Ignoring the reality of negative emotions doesn’t make for a good aesthetic, after all. But this does not show the full story of their experiences. They, too, will have their own hardships that they may feel inclined to hide lest they trample on the ingrained notion that all must be positive.
It’s okay to not be a chipper ray of sunshine all of the time. If we shove those darker emotions into a box in the dusty attic of our minds, they don’t go away. They fester in that space and will come out when we least expect it to trigger us into feeling them. To acknowledge those emotions is the only way to truly process them. We must see them, feel them, and love them enough so that we can heal. This is easier said than done, of course. But perhaps it’s easier than forcing a smile and pretending that everything is alright when it isn’t.
xx
Nykhia
