Today I Decide To Admit I'm Not Ok

I grew up in an era where you always had to pretend to be okay even if you weren't. You had to answer "I'm great" when people ask how you are even though you felt like crumbling inside. You had to smile when hanging out with friends or else they would look at you strangely or ignore you. You had to say "Praise God" or "Thank you Lord" in church even though your faith was teetering on the edge. We all had to put on masks and pretend that everything was okay because we were not ready for an honest conversation. Or we didn't want to be judged that there was something wrong with you or that our faith wasn't enough.

The world eventually realized though that we weren't really all okay and no matter how much we pretended, things would eventually come out. We also realized that there’s a certain beauty to being vulnerable enough to admit that “I’m not okay”. Everyone is just scared and messed up deep inside. Everyone was going through complicated things and no one really has it all together. Everyone cannot really be okay every day. There are times when you're feeling low, you can't bring yourself to smile or even talk, or you just want to say, "No, I'm not" when someone asks if you're okay.

It’s in admitting that things are not okay and that you don’t know when you'll be okay that we become truly human. It's in recognizing that there's something wrong that we can slowly face these "monsters" and deal with them. It’s in acknowledging our vulnerabilities to trusted people that we are able to let them into our life and that in turn, they can also learn to let us in too. We are all just trying to be okay but it's also okay to say that we're not okay.

IF YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING:

Choose a person that you can be vulnerable with and say out loud “I’m not okay”. 

JOURNALING PROMPT

What are the things in your life right now that you can honestly say are not okay?