Fishing

When I write pseudo-depressing things here on my blog, I’m not necessarily looking for pity. It’s not a cry for help. It’s simply an expression of feeling.

Growing up, I felt like a lot of the time it was my responsibility to hide my feelings and emotions from people in order to protect them or to spare them of needing to consider me or tend to me needs, and this is something I’ve carried with me throughout my life. This was especially true with my parents, who of course provided for all my physical needs, but it always felt like they had enough on their plate in terms of emotional burden. Would my parents have turned me away if I came to them with emotional needs? Of course not. But that is precisely why I felt like I had to protect them from my feelings, because I didn’t want to be an added stress in their lives. Was/ is this a potentially autotoxic mindset to have? Probably.

So when I write out these thoughts and make it public it’s me trying to be ok with feeling things, trying to understand them, and trying to sit with them. It’s an exercise is committing those feelings to “paper” and being vulnerable in a space that is not exclusively accessible by me. Even if no one reads these, the idea that someone could is what helps alleviate the anxiety that accompanies those feelings and helps me accept that it is ok to feel these things.

Is posting these feelings publicly a good and healthy thing to do? I have no idea. Me even writing this disclaimer(?) is an attempt to keep people from pitying me or worrying about me, but why don’t I want people to pity me? There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. In my head it goes back to the idea of not wanting to be a burden on others or to not appear “weak,” but I guess that’s part of the problem. Vulnerability is not the same as weakness.