I keep realizing how every emotion I’m uncomfortable with, or every feeling I hide away from, often irritates me when I sense it in those I deeply care about. I’d know how much discomfort it brings, so a part inside feels the need to protect them from that which I personally try to avoid.

And yet the more I make peace with my feelings, the more I’m able to sit with them when they’re intensely felt by others, too.

So on days when I’m able to welcome in my self-doubt and feel a little more okay about its presence, I’m also able to listen to others opening up about theirs. I’m able to sit there and simply nod, instead of rushing to assure them that there’s more to them than what they’re able to see. Because I see it in me, too and I understand that sometimes, it takes more than that reassurance. Sometimes, the reassurance can be even more frustrating when they’re not able to internalize it.

And on other days, when I wake up despising my anxiety and wishing I could maybe just live in another body that doesn’t experience the intensity of it on a daily basis, I realize I’m unable to stay calm when I feel it around. I’d unconsciously go out of my way to ease up other people’s anxieties, which more often than not ends up causing more of it. Because it’s coming from a need to protect them from experiencing something so natural, that they really need to feel at some point. Whether it’s anxiety, confusion, pain or anything that my mind often categorizes as ‘unpleasant’ to feel. Because it majorly sounds unpleasant to me.

That need to protect others, that need to pick everyone up the minute they show signs of struggle; it adds such an unnecessary burden. A responsibility that no one ever really assigned to me.

So here’s a reminder to myself: You’re never really expected to go around trying to make everyone comfortable and happy. They’re not meant to be comfortable and happy all the time anyway; you’d only be robbing them of their right to feel different feelings if you do. And of figuring out what those feelings have to say. So they‘d eventually wake up one day feeling at peace with them, too.

We’re all human beings, yet we have different stories, and that’s okay. (:

October 26, 2020