Take Time to Understand

My biggest takeaway from the pandemic is that you can’t escape yourself. I took this way because being out of school and entering the world I could see that I was riding the wave of life but I wasn’t paying attention to the parts of me that were asking to be loved too. I was so quick to be supportive of my friends that I was forgetting about myself. When it came to me, I ignored myself. This world teaches us from a young age to hate ourselves, resent our individuality, and despise our character. Still, we are continuously trying to love the parts of ourselves that society doesn’t deem acceptable. Oftentimes we use work, school, drugs, alcohol, relationships, etc. We have to learn to accept ourselves because the longest relationship you have is with yourself.

My whole life I have been trying to get ahead, whether it’s ahead in class, ahead of schedule, or ahead of my life. I never stuck around to notice the small details of what makes up my life, like my sister Sasha who asks me if I want any of the food she makes, or my friend Israel who sends me music that makes him think of me, or my friend Aniah who sends me postings about job opportunities. I refused to get to the end of my life and realized I wasn’t living it, and I wasn’t living it because I wasn’t living with myself, the deepest parts of me that I’m scared to admit to myself. I then discovered that by admitting to myself I could then admit to others everything I come with. It strengthened our bonds and it ignited trust between me and those I cared about. It’s still a work in progress and I’m still learning to trust myself to take care of those parts that need extra love.

In this life, I demand from myself that I take the time to understand myself and my own feelings while simultaneously knowing how my feelings affect my loved ones. Given the unpredictability of the pandemic and having to quarantine, everyone was forced to sit with themselves. When we sit with ourselves we begin to process how we got to this point in our lives. One has to ask who they really are and process those emotions before moving forward and in order to move forward we have to heal from our traumas, our fears, and our misconceptions of how we’re supposed to be and what we should look like. I thought I could keep doing my routine and worry about making sure that my priorities were being taken care of. However, what I wasn’t prioritizing was my mental health and critically analyzing how I feel about myself. As of right now I want to be in community with myself and those who are on my healing path so that we can encourage and push each other to where we need to be.

– Top Jimmy