Slay the monster within

I promised myself that I would not write posts on sensitive subjects when I feel down. That’s simply because I learned that when you have a crappy day, the last thing you want to do is let that lousy feeling take over and affect your actions. I’m having a great day today so I’ve decided it’s the perfect time to tackle a dark subject.
I’ve seen and experienced some disturbing shit in my life, especially during childhood. Things seem to have settled down in the past years, but you never know what life has in store for you. The thing is, I used to bitch about how tough and unfair my life was. To myself and a select circle of friends. Of course I did, I was just a kid. But what about right now, when I’m 27 years old? Am I gonna let all those buried experiences surface? Are you?

I had an epiphany one day, as I was walking in my hometown with a friend. He bumped into an ex school mate of his and they engaged in a short chat. At one point, I learned that the guy had the same problem in his life as I did. What struck me was the fact that he was talking about a thing I would never talk about in front of someone I don’t know. There was no emotion in his voice, he was a bit bitter, but he talked about it like it was some minor annoyance. Then I thought: “man, his life must really suck, he probably has way more problems than I do”. Shallow thought, but it worked at that time. And there you go, lesson learned. Most people had dark episodes in their lives, even if they aren’t transparent to everyone else. It doesn’t matter whether they were self-inflicted or they were caused by other factors: they somehow managed to get over them and move on.

That still doesn’t mean I stopped whining. But it so happened that some people opened up to me and shared some of the things that happened in their lives. Broken marriages between parents, one parent dead or supporting both parents. And these confessions helped enforce the idea that I must put what happened to me behind and not let it bring me down. As a matter of fact, as crazy as it sounds, I started looking for advantages in the shittiest situations. I started asking myself: “How can I turn this into a positive situation for me?”; “What have I learned from all this?”; “What aspects of my personality were affected in a positive way?”.

If you still think life is unfair and some people have it all, ask yourself this question: if you managed to bypass all the hurdles in your life and got to where you are right now, is it worth comparing yourself to others? Probably not, since those same people may admire some of your qualities. Then why would you give-in to depression or let simple things affect you? Because you had a rough life? That’s no excuse for turning boredom into depression. That’s no excuse for having anxiety in a certain situation, just because you made a fool of yourself in the same situation 10 years ago.

So do yourself a favor and remember to breathe. Kill your inner demons by having the strength to look back and laugh about the things that scare you. Whether it’s some tragedy in your family, some recurring nightmare you used to have, being made fun of at school, slay that monster and have absolutely no regrets.