Ever since we were little, we have always been taught that crying is a bad thing. Whenever we cried about something, we were cheered up by some way or the other. I don’t mean letting a baby cry is a good thing. Boys are always told when they cry to not be a girl because only girls cry. We were never taught to embrace our feelings. We were never taught that it was okay to cry. We were never taught that it was okay to not be okay.
Being sad is an emotion. It's an emotion we have to embrace and conquer before we go to being happy. If we don’t embrace the sadness or accept, we are sad then probably we are going to end up bottling it up which will lead to other complex feelings. So why not deal with it as and when it comes? Why bottle it up until we explode?
To whom do we have to prove that we are strong? To the society? We live in this world where the social pressure is so high that we have to fake a smile, keep our heads high and pretend to be happy. Pretend to be okay. That’s not normal. We don’t want to be vulnerable. We don’t want to show our vulnerability to the world. All this pressure just to end up being miserable?
Let us normalize not being okay. People cry, people, go through things. They make bad decisions, decisions that can ruin their life, ruin their career. Why will they be positive? The end goal of everything is obviously to attain happiness but to get to the happiness you have to go through the sadness. We can only be truly happy when we get past those emotions that we have been bottling up.
We all have our own way of dealing with things. If you need to take a break and have 10 cups of coffee and binge watch friends for two days straight to deal with it then do it. Who is stopping you? Accept that you are not okay and then do something about it. Realize it and talk to your close family and friends or even a therapist about it.
Let's stop putting pressure on ourselves and others to be fine and happy and chirpy all the time. Let us be and let people be and deal with things. Let us be there for people who need us and seek help when we need it. Let us build a world where it is okay to cry and feel things, where it's okay to feel vulnerable without being judged.
Remember, it's okay to not be okay.