Choose one: A Life of Unhappiness or Contentment?

I’ve been going through it for almost a year now and those that don’t know me personally couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to tell. I think one of my superpowers is my energy and positivity and let me tell you right now it can be DRAINING. I love being the one that is going to encourage you and big you up when you accomplish great things. We all want a cheerleader and someone who is going to look at both sides when the world just wants to hate. But something happened that rocked my world last year. I lost one of the most important relationships to me and I went through the worst grieving process I’ve ever dealt with. I stayed in bed for two to three weeks, barely showered, barely ate, and cried all day everyday. I was a complete mess, but as I mentioned, not many people would know. I would still post content that I had filmed prior and post stories on my  Instagram of motivational posts and things that I loved. It was more so a distraction for me but to others that was what I did regularly so it couldn’t have been alarming. And I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want to be a burden to anyone, even the people that did know what was going on. I think that was my initial motivation to get it together. I wanted to be good so others didn’t have to take care of me. Then I realized after getting back into bed and crying for the umpteenth time that that wasn’t motivation enough. My mental wasn’t strong enough to show up for others anymore. I had to show up for myself if I wanted to survive. So, I started my healing process.

The realization of what I needed to focus on kickstarted the entire process. I knew I had to figure out who I was because not knowing led me astray. I had to be consistent and diligent for myself because though I had friends who were checking on me, they weren’t going to really be able to see if I was truly eating and not self-sabotaging.

I had to first assess the situation. What happened? What lead to all of this? Was I being realistic? What was going right and what was going wrong? I then thought of what I wanted to accomplish by the end of this mess of what my life was at the moment. Who did I want to be? How did I want to act? How did I want to process emotions moving forward? But essentially who was I? From these questions, I felt like I had a starting and ending point, but how was I truly going to get through all this?

 God was going to be my saving grace. I knew I had to have something to ground me and remind me of my purpose when I couldn’t get that from humans or tangible items. My faith was going to carry me. I knew I needed some outside help too. Therapy had helped before but I needed to find a therapist that was going to make me feel safer than I ever felt before because this was a time I felt so alone and unprotected. Lastly, I knew I needed positive distractions that were all going to help me accomplish my end goal but also keep my mind off the pain. When you find those things and you look back to where your pain was it eventually doesn’t hurt as much. As everyone says, time heals everything. But I only believe that if you are truly doing the work to heal it is going to hurt just as much years later.

So I started working on my 3 healing points. I prayed and cried to God every morning and night. I read the things I didn’t believe at the moment and tried to let it get through to me. I had to understand God doesn’t cause the suffering to happen, but he allows the lessons to grow me. What was I supposed to learn from this? I knew the praying was doing something but I had to add something more because I was so still full of so much hurt. I incorporated meditation, journaling, and watching and marinating on sermons. I grew up listening to the same pastors from my home church and then I started going to Catholic church when I moved to San Francisco. I had the same routines and so listening to other pastors speak through God like Steve Harvey (I know hes not a pastor but he was so good at sharing his testimony that he became mine), Sarah Jakes Roberts, TD Jakes, and so much more started helping to realize what God was saying to me. It started to open my eyes to other ways of understanding God.

Then I tried therapy again. I started a new health insurance with my job and the best thing about it was that we had an extensive network to look through for therapists which meant I had way more options to find a black therapist. And I did. I instantly loved my therapist. We’ve only worked with each other for 4 months but she has been able to challenge me, listen and not judge me, calm me down, and just be a sounding board to talk to. I didn’t realize how much I needed that until I finally found a therapist that was like this. She even lets me text her throughout the week when I’m going through it.

And then lastly, I threw myself into my work and the things that I needed to grow my self-esteem. I struggle with confidence and so that is what I mainly wanted to focus on to learn how to gain that confidence in myself. Therapy has helped in that but personally, I began talking to myself in the mirror and out loud, I watched videos of how others moved past their speech impediments, and I would challenge myself to go out and talk to new people even if it was just to tell them I loved their outfit. I focused on my career goals and started loving the content I was making, and I actually grew to kind of like the editing process. It all started making me content because I knew I was putting effort into myself.

And here I am. 9 months into my healing process and I feel so much better. I still have my moments where I feel stuck and gross but then I also have my moments where I feel proud of myself, happy, and at some type of peace. I look to my past and the pain is still there, but it doesn’t hurt as much. I look to my future, and I am excited for all the blessings I know God is bringing my way then I look to my present and I feel proud that I have made it this far. If you’re going through a hard time, you’ll make it out too, but just know it will come with ups and downs, but would you rather stay in a place where you're stuck in a cycle of unhappiness or in a place where you know that eventually, you’ll feel great, and have amazing experiences? It's too short a life to live in self-caused turmoil.