Throughout the past few years of my life I had grown accustomed to living in a shell, and constantly tried to shut myself out from the rest of the world. Through a few heartbreaks and disappointments I found that if you cared too much about others and their opinions, you were bound to get hurt, and I believed that if you showed too much of who you really are people would find a flaw and end up hurting you too. I became this emotionless rock who thought that vulnerability and transparency were weaknesses, and I truly believed only the worst in people.
Though this sounds lonely, it had become such a normal attitude for me to have that I became comfortable with it. I thought that the way I was feeling was completely normal and would pass eventually, and I became a person who constantly dreamed of and anticipated the future. Being expectant and excited for the next part of your life could be a good thing, but I became so impatient that I completely forgot how to live in my present moment. There’s been so many times where I saw myself trying to grow up before my time or beating myself up over experiences I hadn’t yet reached, because I deemed them a necessary factor for me to be able to move on towards another season of my life. I was so fixed on moving on from the unpleasant parts of my life that it kept me from recognizing the power I had within myself to switch my situation around and simply enjoy the place I was in.
I would be lying to myself if I said that this is something I’ve conquered and don’t struggle with anymore. When hardships come my way, I could easily react by closing myself off and using the same mindset that never helped me in the past. But before becoming that same person who shut out every positive voice and kept hoping for the next moment to arrive, I realized that absolutely nothing was going to change in my life unless I stopped letting situations dictate the way I viewed my moments. I realized that my life right now is consisted of moments I’ll never have again, and by spending them hoping for the next part of my life to arrive ruins every opportunity of building myself up and growing in ways I had never been able to before.
Use your time of pain and hurt and dedicate it to being yourself and discovering who you are, by doing what you love to do and offering your art to the world. I regret all of the time I wasted pitying myself, because I could’ve been pushing myself towards achieving something that would make that moment I was trying to escape from something to celebrate. The way I see it, our lives model an unwritten book. Every single moment and experience is so essential to building our characters up and bringing them to greater places in the story. When we try to move along to different chapters without stopping and appreciating where we are right now, we only end up confused. Be who you are, love who you are, and live in this moment. We still have so much to learn and experience, but that’s truly what I find most beautiful about our lives.
