A hard truth in the journey: facing reality.
Everyone’s mental landscape is different. Inside your head, you’re never the same as anyone else. Your emotions, thoughts, insecurities - they are all specific and unique to you. They’ll never be identical to anyone else. I say this because when people trade “mental wisdom”, they often forget this fact. What works for someone else might really not work for you. What is easy for one person, might be incredibly difficult for another. Understanding and building awareness of your own mental landscape, and how it relates to others is a really important skill.
That being said, I do believe there to be universal truths and challenges applicable to everyone. “Mental wisdom” that can be shared and effectively applied across the board. Here I want to share a lesson I’ve learned along the way: the importance of facing reality.
It sounds like an incredibly simple “lesson”. Facing reality. It’s a phrase you’ve no doubt heard many times before, and yet so had I. As you grow up you’re told to “accept things they way they are”, “that’s just life” and other sayings relating to confronting what is, and not what you want things to be.
I think many people never have to fully internalise this message. And that’s because it’s only really applicable when your life drastically downturns. It’s only when things suddenly seem so out of control, your life has completely changed and you’re sitting there swamped in denial.
Mental health can swing and change at a moment’s notice. It can creep up on you, and suddenly appear with no warning. It’s something so uncontrollable at times, and yet can have such severe consequences. It can rob people of everything. Happiness, memories, peace, money, relationships, health. It does so with no remorse, and no care.
It’s very easy when your world is turned upside down to hide away. It’s not weak, or abnormal. It’s such a natural emotion, one we all understand. Confronting really ugly truths, and unpleasant new realities is one of the hardest things in life. Some try to practice “non-attachment”, and might even become quite good at it - but fundamentally we’re all human, and facing negative spirals out of your control, ripping your life apart, hit the very core of our beings. It scares us deeply.
Nobody is coming to save you. It’s a brutal line. But it’s true. At some point, you’ve got to realise nobody can heal you “up there” except yourself. And life is going to move on regardless. It does matter how it happened. It is important to find the cause - maybe even hold someone accountable. But ultimately, once you’ve been hurt, there’s no going back. You can’t reverse it. You can’t complain your way out of it. You can only move forwards. You either stay stuck, or take the decision to face what is, and move towards what will be.
Life is cruel sometimes. There are people who factually have had it worse. Bad things happen to good people. People who cause hurt, often live on without consequence. The world seems so wrong in this way. I don’t want to sit here and preach suffering “teaches you things” or “everything happens for a reason”, because it invalidates the experience. There are good and bad sides to everything, but the bad side can really suck. Mental struggles can be some of the most painful, isolating and debilitating life experiences. They are often not something beneficial to go through, and you choose to see the positives only because you have to. But they happen. Bad things happen. Bad things you can’t stop. And whatever happens to you, however severe it might be, your only choice is to move through it. There’s always more life to live, no matter what happens before. You can only play the hand you’re dealt.
Sam.