Feels like it’s been awhile. (It has not.)
Okay, I thought I had figured out a way to
start this one but apparently I’m still a bit stuck. We’ll just go with the
flow here. Alright, “work in silence.”
Real talk, not everyone is a good person so
there is a possibility when you go around talking to people about your hustle,
they will wish you otherwise. In your struggle, they pray to watch you crumble.
The beauty, or the art of silence is that your success will scream the absolute
loudest when no one saw it coming. But that’s not the tea I’m serving today.
The tea is sometimes you have to work on yourself
in silence. Look, I’m not all about ‘me, myself and I against the world’ because
that’s just sad and ironically narcissistic to think that the world would care that
much about a socially-awkward teenage girl (ew). But, personally speaking,
telling the world my problem did very little to help me improve and more than
anything it turned the problem into a much bigger deal. I’d been in that
situation for quite a few times.
Sometimes, when I posted sad ass shit on my
Instagram or WhatsApp, I knew that my sole intention was to get someone’s
attention. Just one, anyone. And I would obsess over who read it, who
replied and said something and who didn’t. It was tiring because I was fixated
on finding a person who could help to ‘fix’ me. It was tiring dealing with how small
I felt at the time, because I needed the validation, be it to know that sadness
would pass, or that I would be okay, or that someone cared just enough to ask. (Why
am I telling you this?)
Even in a much smaller scale, when I’m
feeling a bit down, or odd, or am having ‘one of those days’, lately I try not
to tell anyone about it especially if it’s not a big deal (most of the time, if
not every time, it really is not). The reason being is when I do tell
someone about it, it drags the feeling and stretches it into something bigger,
it becomes even more dreadful. I know it sounds like not saying it out loud is
equivalent to denying it, but no, it’s just that this is something I have to
deal with myself.
Okay here’s an example because I’m not even
sure I’m making any sense. Last year I had to go to driving lessons and I.
fucking. hated. them. mainly because I sucked at it and I wasn’t used to being that
bad at something (again, ew) and the place was full of strangers. So I
dreaded those lessons a lot and the more people I told about not wanting to go,
the more dreadful it became. It became more real, if that makes sense.
Then I tried not telling anyone about having a driving lesson on that
particular day and it suddenly became more bearable. It felt like it wasn’t
that big of a deal.
I feel like a lot of things in life is not
that big of a deal. No, I’m not shrugging off serious issues. I’m just asking
myself to not be petty. Sometimes sadness is only sadness, anger
especially should not be nurtured and I just have to take a little time for
myself and figure shit out. And there’s that sense of pride in helping myself
recover, even in the smallest things.
Now, on the contrary, seeking for help is
important and it helps you go through stuffs. Talking about your vulnerability
does help. But, you have to be careful in choosing who’s listening and see for yourself
the scale of things and how much it will help you to talk it out and vice
versa. Of course, everyone has a different way of looking problems, hence the
different solutions.
I think maybe there are people who disagree
with what I said previously and see it as supressing the feelings but here’s
the thing; I don’t do that. I express whatever emotion there is but to myself,
especially if I am still in that moment. I need to understand whatever it is so
I can move past it without making a commotion and feeling like I need to get
that validation from someone else.
I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say
that I don’t tell people about my business anymore because, good lord, I
still do. But I try to see for myself what is worthy of telling and what is not,
what I can go through myself and what I need my friends to help me with, and what's venting and what is purely juicy gossip. It’s
all in the balance, I guess.
Well, you know yourself best. Whatever that
is the healthiest for you, do that.
-
Nik.
Nik Fateen. An introvert trying to find home in a foreign space.