Over the past month, I learned a very important lesson about choosing yourself. As I’ve observed myself over the years, I’ve noticed that I follow a typical pattern during the school year. 1. Start off with a healthy number of classes and extra-curriculars. 2. Discover many more extremely exciting extra-curriculars that I force to myself to “have the time for.” 3. Feel amazing, motivated and driven by all the cool things I’m doing. 4. Get burnt out, depressed, and overwhelmed because I can’t handle so many things. 5. Consider quitting, but deciding to "push through it" instead 6. l Crash, burn and get to a really really low place. So since classes started, I’ve been going through this pattern again. Within the past couple weeks I found some jobs centered around things I'm REALLY passionate about, like theatre education, social justice education, etc. I loved these jobs. They helped give me motivation and purpose when schoolwork got dull. But even though I really really loved them, I still ended up at step 4. Along with my schoolwork, it was just way too much for me to handle. I got behind on assignments, classes, work projects and I spent each day fluctuating between anxious about all I had to get done and depressed about how my workload never seemed to end. Even though my new jobs were giving me a newfound purpose, I was really starting to question the value of them. Normally, I would push past these doubts and just keep on working until it was too late. But this time I made a different decision. I can never forget what the consequences were of pushing myself too hard last school year, and because of this I couldn’t let myself go through the same thing again. And so, I made the decision (FOR THE FIRST TIME) of my choosing myself and my health over the work opportunities I loved so much and I quit the jobs. AND IT WAS HARD. I expected myself to feel really good after I went through with it, but instead I felt really shitty. I’ve never left something because I couldn’t “handle” it. I felt weak and pathetic because I’m so used to priding myself on the ability to push past all pain and just work instead, like I always see everyone around me doing. But also, what kind of life is that??? The biggest thing college has taught me is to do what is best for yourself instead of doing what everyone else is doing. I don’t want to spend everyday an emotional wreck working from sun-up to sundown just because that’s what “everybody else is doing.” I want to push myself to make the difficult decision to put my health first even if no one else is. Making time for myself still feels weird, because there's a part of me that feels like I need to spend all of my time being productive to have value, but there’s also a part of me that recognizes my inherent value and takes joy in just taking care of myself. And gradually that part is getting stronger and stronger. :) So now I have time to do the things I enjoy again. Like watching scary movies, putting on face masks and (hello!) writing this blog! And even if it feels weird now, I know over time I'll start to feel better about making the decision and I'll even feel more comfortable now if I have to make a similar decision in the future. I know choosing yourself is so much easier said than done, but I really hope this helps encourage you to take some steps towards doing the same.
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Naija SunshineHi! My name is Efe and this is my mental health blog where I'll be talking about my experiences with mental illness, as well as my thoughts and tips. Archives
September 2021
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