Some More Things I Wish I Had Told My Younger Self

Staying sad forever doesn’t help anyone, and it definitely won’t save you

You make mistakes, you fuck up sometimes monumentally and then comes the sadness. Or, rather than the doing, it is simply done to you. Both ways hurt, but sitting in your sadness does not fix it. Where acts cannot be undone, you are left with no choice other than to feel (or ignore, but that’s not where you want to be). Feeling can give you so much more freedom than hiding or disguising, all of which I wish you knew before. Feeling is good but living with them to your detriment is not, it will get to a point where the only one breaking your heart is you. There is no more conversation to be gone over and no more scenarios left to dream up. Once you feel in all its entirety, you’re allowed to stop. Stop reprimanding yourself for where you could have been but are not. Focus entirely on your present. Fix your perspective because staying sad will not change your past.

Being not all bad doesn’t mean you’re all good

I know you’ll hate the taste of this bitter pill, but sometimes you are the toxic one. Sometimes you’re the one in the wrong and sometimes you need to take accountability. you learn this in time but it isn’t an easy road. Being well intentioned is important of course, but execution reigns precedent for the whole message. If you mean well but hurt people far more in the process, you’re doing something wrong. Intentions are important but if you’re the only one who knows them, you won’t achieve what you’re aiming for. Your words will get lost in translation, and it may even get so late that you forget what it is you’re fighting for. This can turn you into a toxic person when you don’t mean to be. It’s a very long and very slippery slope. Do your best not to fall down. Being good doesn’t mean you’re all good and it doesn’t give you a pass to do bad just because it’s well intentioned.

Sometimes your trauma is just traumatic

You are going to go through things worse than you could have imagined. Things that you don’t always know how to articulate. But when you do you will have some well meaning people and some not-so-well meaning people will try and make an “in the end…” or “at the end of the day…” type of story out of your trauma. Don’t let them. While you can’t let your trauma consume you don’t let it become all that you are. You are so much more than what has been done. Things that caused you pain, took your voice and stole your time. There isn’t always that “in the end” story that can be made from it. You don’t have to be grateful for pain in the hope it teaches you something. There’s no denying you have learnt from your trauma, but taking the understanding that lessons require pain can keep you in a cycle of trauma that will be so much harder to break.

Lessons don’t always have to be hard

This follows perfectly into what I am about to tell you now, lessons don’t have to be hard! Funnily enough even this, we learn the hard way. More times than I can recall, I wish I allowed myself to learn lessons the easier way rather than sticking around for things to get hard. I often thought the first sign of something not being right wasn’t enough. That first wave of doubt. I think all of this comes from the trust you have in yourself. It still trips me up even now. But at least I have learnt to give myself more freedom in what I choose. I ended up learning that I am not bound to one circumstance or outcome and I wish you had known that too. Situations are malleable and you are too. You have to learn and grown and if you let it, things might just work a little better than expected. Growth is inevitable and scary and not always what you have in mind. But the most unfair truth is that nothing can stop it. Wether you want to hear, feel and see them or not; lessons always have their way of finding you. So is it not better to be found in a moment of calm or at worst displeasure rather than through pain?