Isolation

My last post was very vulnerable.

Like very. I was so scared to share it like I spent days contemplating whether it was too raw or too real or too intense.

I laid in bed at night and felt this wave of anxiety hit me, paralyse me almost because I was so afraid to share that story. Too afraid to share the realness of what I was going through. I had realised that that’s the enemy best way to attack, silencing me. The enemy silences our story, he silences our courage and keeps you captive in isolation. But thank God I posted it because the response was incredible, I had no idea that so many people were dealing with the same thing as me. Ah! There’s so much freedom in honesty and bringing things to the light. So all of you that reached out and shared your stories thank you!

This post is also gonna be bit vulnerable, (lol). This is SO weird for me because I use to be the most closed off person ever, and I loved it! Like I thought it was ‘cool’ to be closed off and ‘mysterious’. You know like those people you saw at school that were super cool and quiet - if you can’t picture it I’ll picture it for you, (I’m a visual person. So here it is) that cool popular tall guy that never speaks in class, he’s closed off and mysterious, his hair covers his face and everyone is trying to figure him out, to everyone he’s so chill and nothing bothers him. But in reality, he gets home from school every day feeling drained from not speaking to anyone, he’s sick of putting on this mask, he honestly just wants to be heard but he continues to fool people into thinking he’s just this mystery, he longs for someone to figure him out.

Past

Right, so that was me for a while, I thought hiding my feelings was cool and quirky. It's not, it’s unhealthy. Like I thought not crying was cool. It literally makes no sense if you’ve never experienced it, but I did. For a long time. If you’re sitting here not understanding what I'm saying - think of yourself as lucky to not have had this mindset. I admit its a WEIRD mindset. Another way to put it is: vulnerability terrified me, I found comfort in the fact that no one knew what I was going through, I found comfort in my isolation. Comfort in isolation - what an unhealthy phrase.

But how did I get to that mindset - what part of me longed to hideaway?

Regardless of how I got to that point. I was there, I was isolating myself.

Present

And so here I am, 8460 km's away from my parents (long story short - they went to Phuket for holiday and got stuck there during lockdown)

I’m social distancing with my younger sister at family friends (who have been absolutely amazing - words cannot explain how grateful I am for them) and in the midst of a global pandemic and not seeing my parents for 2 months I hadn’t cried once. That weird part of my mindset crept up again and I didn’t dare acknowledge my feelings. So many people messaged and asked if I was okay, and for a long time, I was. I woke up and went to bed without even thinking about what I was feeling. I isolated myself from my feelings. It got to the point where I didn’t understand why people were so worried, I really had lost touch of reality. So those old tendencies and mindset that I had crept in once again and I completely isolated myself from my friends and parents - like we didn’t call/facetime for weeks. And the one day my friend had asked me how I was doing, and as we all do we, I respond using the most commonly used sentence in the English language. “I’m fine”

My friend wasn’t convinced and challenged me to be real about how I felt. I then went on to explain how there’s no point in being sad and thinking about my situation wasn’t going to solve it, I had no control over it. Having negative emotions wasn’t necessary, what does it do, what does it accomplish, what’s the point. My friend responded with a story in the bible.

John 11.

The death of Lazarus

35 Jesus wept.

That’s the whole verse.

If you haven’t read this story, I encourage you too. This story shows the heart of God, it shows his humanity, it shows his raw emotions, it shows us that the saviour of the world, the man who walked on water, the man who cured diseases, the man who made blind men see, the man who hung on a cross and defeated sin, wept.

HE WEPT.

ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

My friend reminded me that Jesus felt his emotions and that its okay to feel mine too.

Jesus didn’t isolate himself from what he was feeling - craziest thing is, he knew he would resurrect Lazarus, he knew the miracle, he knew the outcome, but he took the time to weep to show his humanity.

And so now I tell myself :

He wept

Allow yourself to weep.

He felt.

Allow yourself to feel too

I’m reminded that my feelings are okay, today was difficult and I have to remind myself that that's okay. It’s okay to feel sad. It's okay to cry. I’m allowed to feel this way. I actually have to allow myself to feel sad, I need to give myself grace to go through the motions of my emotions.

Because, if the creator of the universe took the time to acknowledge his feelings, so should I.