On the cornerstone

Let’s talk about mental health.
My anxiety manifests sometimes as uncontrollable rage, sometimes as a boulder sitting on my chest, reminding me of all the bad in all the corners of the world. It is triggered by many things I haven’t even figured out yet. It is chronic and overwhelming at times, but I also am secretly grateful for it because it keeps me planning and forces me to balance my work load and procrastinate less.
However, growing up with social media has highlighted early red flags for what behaviors I need to chill on and what’s working for me. One big thing I’ve learned is that many of us don’t take signs from our bodies very seriously. Many of us fall in line with stigmas about mental health and think the state we’re in is normal because we’re accustomed to it and no one is saying otherwise. Adjusting to your misery doesn’t mean you’re not miserable.
I’ve only recently acknowledged a crushing anxiety that has defined and shaped me since childhood, it has been the inexplicable factor in so many pivotal moments of my life that I didn’t even know it was defining for me.
In the past few years, I’ve tried to step back and give every situation and every person more room for their context, for the factors that shaped that situation or person, because it all really is just one very big picture and sometimes you just need to see more of it. While this has worked wonders for my grace for others and my general panic about being alive, it’s also shown me how easy it is for us to slip into complacency about our health, our happiness, and what we’re willing to sacrifice of those things when we don’t have any fight left.
Please, always fight for yourself. Please, PLEASE don’t settle for quiet misery because you don’t expect things to be better in such a world as what we’ve built. You’re allowed to demand more from your time here. You’re entitled to pursue your happiness, not just your survival.