You Do Not Need A ‘Valid’ Reason To Be Sad

It often feels as though we are in a competition, not only with ourselves but with everyone else’s misery. We have been conditioned to believe that we are allowed to experience a certain amount of pain only when the situation is right — the bigger the tragedy, the more acceptable it is to feel sad. I am here to remind you that your feelings are valid, regardless of what is causing them.

First of all, you do not need a reason to feel down. Sometimes searching desperately for that reason will only leave you feeling more drained and exhausted than before. You might even end up digging up old ghosts from the past or creating unrealistic memories in your head that never actually happened simply to find a way to justify your emotions. You do not need to go through some life-shattering event in order to not want to get out of bed one day or in order to not want to deal with anyone for a while, and you definitely do not need to justify yourself. Uncertainty is a beautiful part of life.

This idea that you should not feel some type of way because it could always be worse or because there is always someone has it worse than you does not make a lot of sense to me. Everyone’s world is created based on their own personal views, experiences, and assumptions of itself. Therefore, everyone, and I mean everyone, is different and everyone experiences and manages their life situations differently. While someone who just lost a loved one might take that opportunity to become better and do great things in their honor, someone else might manage this situation by grieving, crying, and staying home for weeks. Both forms of management are complete okay. You do what works for YOU because you are the one in control of your own life, and therefore the outcomes that will result from it. Many will pretend to know, but no one knows yourself like you do.

This pressure of having an answer for everything and of having to act a certain way to reach others’ expectations is what is slowly killing us. This is what leads to the closing off, to the wall-building, to the helplessness. We become so terrified of opening ourselves up to others because we are scared they will make us feel even worse for what we are feeling or that they will just take our words and translate them into their own story as if, like I said before, it was a competition.

We should never feel guilty for being human. This world would be a much better place not only if we tried to listen and understand each other, but if we stopped comparing ourselves to others in the never-ending search of validation. This is the validation you have been looking for. This is me telling you that it is okay to not feel okay. Period.