“You’re so strong!”
That’s something I often hear and more often tell myself. This weekend, after feeling crumby for all day, I got into a darker and darker place as the night went on. Some external factor brought things up to surface but the bulk of the issues are all internal.
All of my life, I’ve been told that I need to be strong and I can weather the storm. I know that the same has been told to my mother which was also told to her mother. There’s this pressure that comes with that advice that only lately I realized the toll it has taken on me.
After staying up until 5am, texting my mom and asking for her guidance and praying asking my grandma to watch and guide over me - I was able to fall asleep. Not for long but long enough to allow me to work an extra shift due to ticket backlog.
While laying in bed - I scrolled through Twitter and saw a tweet that spoke about how someone yearned to be the person who didn’t have to be strong and deal with their particular trauma. I tapped through and looked at the replies and saw this:
And that stayed with me all morning and all afternoon. So much so, that when I managed to get dressed and out of the house in an attempt to feel some normalcy - I found myself sitting here in between bites of a Korean chicken sandwich drafting this in my notes app.
The truth is, I’m tired of being strong. I’m tired of figuring things out for me, my partner, my family, my friends, strangers that write tickets to my job or anyone else, I’m tired of taking hits and picking myself back up because that’s the only option.
I want compassion, I want softness, I want to feel taken care of in a genuine way. In my own house, in the streets, at my job. I don’t mean I want to live in a padded world, I know we all have shit we deal with, I just want a break.
This sounds like a journal entry - which I’m sharing publicly - but I felt that tweet so hard and after hearing from some of you two weeks ago - maybe it can speak to you as well and allow you to figure out how to take steps to allow for a softer world to exist for you too.
I don’t know how but God knows I’ve had to figure things out before, so, I’ll do it again and this time for me.
As always, much love. 💜