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“I’ll Listen to The Memories as They Cry, Cry, Cry.”


 

I’ve been going on what I like to call “mental health walks” once a week. I’ll put on a podcast and walk for the entirety of the episode. this week I listened to an episode titled “الرقص على اشلاء الجيل” which roughly translates to dancing on the ruins of the generation. This episode talked about how gen-z is surrounded by a reality they can’t escape but are forced to face. They learn how to resist at a young age and mask their emotions because they must be grateful for the world they’ve been given. It also touched on toxic positivity, grief, and acceptance. Particularly how we must allow ourselves to feel sadness in the moment, and how to grieve in the moment so that we don’t go through the stages of grief later. How allowing ourselves to feel our negative emotions and sadness is the only way we will survive and live. 

 

I always played “the rock” in my family or in my friendships and I hold a certain strength in that. But even rocks weather over time. Now, I think about the depressive episodes I’ve faced lately. How helpless I felt in the face of change. How I didn’t know why I was sad or what I was grieving but how gut-wrenching it was for me to face another day. I wonder how many of these depressive episodes are delayed grief. How much of it is unprocessed emotions on my part. maybe if I allowed myself to feel more instead of pushing through, I wouldn’t be crying while going on a run. 


Maybe if I allowed myself to be hurt, I wouldn’t be awake at 5 AM because my thoughts are too loud. I think this is why “Fireworks’ by Mitski made me ugly cry the first time I listened to it, but that is neither here nor there.

 

What I’m trying to say is accepting our pain and allowing ourselves to feel and calling out the toxic positivity bullshit might actually be one way to heal. So what if that makes me sound like a pessimist? I can’t run from my reality so I might as well face it my perception of it. This is easier said than done. I have been the way I am for 22 long years; however, there is no harm in thinking of it and growing accordingly in my own time.


-hammie

11:42 PM

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