Dear Letter,
Sasa, letter, I thought it would be a while since I came back to write my last post for the year but I have been thinking about this one lately. Well, I had to write to you after sitting on it for a hot minute.
There are moments in my life when I get the urge to write my memoir. Then I get hit by reality and the work that goes into writing a whole book and English is my third language and then there is the whole love of privacy...and I push it in the back of my mind. Now I believe in looking at your past but not dwelling on it. Some days you need encouragement to see how far you have come. I may not be where I want to be but by God's grace, I'm not where I used to be and I don't look like what I have been through. On these days, I walk back through memory lane into my life. I could have been a villain. The bright energetic woman you see now was not always cheerful, self-confident, or even charismatic. I mean negative nancy had nothing on me. Life and people had turned me cynical and pessimistic. I hated the world, I hated life, and I hated people. During this period in my life, I learned rock bottom had a basement. Letter i can't really get into the details because I value my privacy a bit too much and there is something in my life I just don't have the energy to share. I lost someone close to me halfway through high school and that stuff hit hard. I was going downhill before this but now depression and anxiety started to scream loud and I just began spiraling. The worst thing was because I had shut down the world, I was suffering in silence and putting up a facade.
Grief is a funny thing - it's the one emotion I have never understood because you experience it differently. During my grieving stage is when something in me switched. I can't pinpoint what exactly but I realized I was holding on to too much anger, frustration, resentment, shame, guilt, and envy. I was letting all these emotions run me and I was tired of living like this. I was tired of being alive but dead inside. Have you ever been of tired being tired? because same.
So what did I do? I decided to talk to someone I trust. You can't heal from something you don't acknowledge. Something I have been blessed with is the people in my corner. I have a few trusted hardcore people in my corner who fight for me when I have nothing left. Who have faith for me when mine begins to waver...I forgave the people in my life. Let me make something clear here, forgiving someone doesn't mean you all of sudden become friends and start kiking with each other. This can happen for some people, but there are some people who being around them remind you of the hurt. To me, it was the latter. I forgave the people for me, I wanted to be able to move on. To live a life I was happy about. Look in the mirror and be satisfied by the woman looking back at me. This meant letting go of the emotions that were controlling me and this meant forgiving the people who hurt me. This was also the moment in my life when advocating for mental health awareness being a part of my life. Letter i write this to say, have grace for people around you and yourself, we all going through something. Forgive Pharoh! Make sure you do it for yourself.
P.S: Something college taught me about 2 years ago is we are all villains in somebody's story even if we thought we were having their best interest at heart. Some of us may not want to accept but hate to bust your bubble. If you are reading this letter & I have some way been a villain in your story, I'm sorry.
Until next time,
D
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