I’m torn and today was a difficult day to write this musing because I am still in a funky headspace to process how I feel about sharing such details.
Social media is prime for exploiting our trauma for likes. It’s a double edge sword. On one end there’s value in sharing such intimate details about our lives. It can be cathartic for some and inspiring for others to read.
On the end, it feels like there’s this quiet selection committee who determines what is relevant for the collective and what is TMI.
I always wonder how to exactly share my non-work related musings. I’ve found a cadence that works for me where I’m uncomfortable enough to challenge my fear of opening up without compromising my mental health in the process.
And yet I still struggle to click publish on certain posts because the inner critic gets loud. It doesn’t help that I have people in my orb who are hardcore about toxic positivity and I recognize that.
To them, sharing challenges is low vibe or highlighting drama instead of being focused on solutions. I’ve lost friends and I’ve disconnected from many people because of how “bad” I’m made to feel about my feelings.
I contended with being the energetic vampire that we’re told to cut that my circle of influence looks more like a dot.
I’ve internalized those “motivational quotes” where they say “move, you’re not a tree” and I’ve unfollowed a ton of accounts because the astrologer or thought leader use condescending tone when talking about the impasses people face.
Maybe it’s my own healing process that forced me to confront the ways I was judging others that I’ve developed a thin skin for criticism without compassion.
Today was a difficult day to manage and without going into details, I was able to step outside of myself to see how much grace I needed to give myself.
If I share this as a newsletter, it becomes TMI because I would need to extract some “purpose” from the overshare but sometimes we just have difficult days and it’s OK to talk about them.
But I also know that it’s not and that’s what makes the difficult days even more painful to process.
I remember the funky edible trip I had in the Bronx a few weeks ago brought a new level of awareness for me about my mortality and I think about it constantly.
I’ve been high before but that was something else. I was hallucinating. A few times I thought I was going to die in the car. I remember thinking I couldn’t go to sleep because then I wouldn’t wake up and when I looked in the backseat to see my family member sleeping after having the same edibles, I thought OK that thought is all in my mind.
I had several out of body experiences and I saw myself leaping out of the moving car to jump off the bridge while we driving over it. I had such a tight grasp on the seatbelt to keep myself from opening the door.
And then I made it to the house and heard coquis in the kitchen.
It was the trippiest of days and not in a pleasant way. All I kept thinking was “is this it?” as I reflected on my life.
The most haunting part of the day was seeing how life continued to move effortless without me which led me to recognize that my presence in this lifetime is not only fleeting but inconsequential.
Is it TMI to share that I didn’t see a purpose in living?
That I couldn’t identify a reason to stay? For many that reflection is uncomfortable and depending on who I tell, I may be jeopardizing my own freedom for the sake of treating whatever people think I have simply because I question life + death.
I read how others talk about their mental struggles and how they’re supportive to “tell their truth” but can’t help feeling resentful at being treated like mines are too much information or emotionally draining for others to hear.
At what point do we recognize the ebbs and flows of mental wellness as a normal state of being instead of ostracizing us to the fringes of society?
Depression, anxiety, ADHD, OCD, s. ideations – all of these are counter-intuitive to providing value in a world that only cares about what you’re able to contribute in terms of labor and it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to find solace in a body that will easily be forgotten once my productivity reaches it’s shelf life.
But that’s TMI. I should be writing about how to hack Threads so all the boss babes can “do what they love from a beach in Malibu while enjoying multiple streams of income from their overpriced property investment and MLM business model.”