Understanding emotions and articulating thoughts are both essential in how you value your mind and yourself. There are various ways in how you make sense of your feelings and intrusive thoughts: having someone to talk to, act of ignoring, binge-watching movies, listening to songs and singing the emotions out of your system are just a few of what I know of.
Writing it all down on a notebook has always personally stuck and resonated with me. There's comfort in converting the noise that used to linger in my mind into something graspable just by making sense out of them and letting them formulate into words.
During the times I obtain sudden bursts of realizations and the absence of a pen and paper is along with me, I have no other choice but to take my phone out of my pocket and type everything down before my thoughts begin to fade away. It serves as a remembrance or proof which, from time to time, makes me learn all over again. Reading my notes and journals from the past years make me realize how much I've changed both emotionally and intellectually. It also makes me realize that version of me was able to withstand those lows for me to have my highs now.
Nothing is ever easy, that's a given, and my journals are my sentiments which teach me things about life. It's been a while since I last wrote on my journals, particularly because I don't feel as lost, misunderstood and somber as before and because my view of things have also changed. Although they are intimate to me, I would like to share some of my realizations with you - to enlighten and hopefully, be of help to you with whatever you're going through.
On March 5, 2019, I wrote "I am not what you think of me, I am only what I choose you to see me." This was an excerpt from a poem that I wrote which contains the message of how different we are depending on the perspectives of people. To some people, we're loud, to others, we're quiet. Some people our age think we're friendly and some people older than us, think we're too closed off in our own shells. We all have different characteristics and personalities and sometimes these tend to show and tend to hide when we're with certain people. We can't trust everybody and we can't force ourselves to feel comfortable with everybody, thus, some parts of our identity are not for others to know.
On March 8, 2019, I wrote "Your worth is not based on how people value, appreciate or treasure you. You are worthy. You matter as much as the things that matter to you matter." This was a realization I had about self-worth. We do not need to wait for another person to come along and give us what we need because these necessities are for us to begin with. It starts with us. We can't share what we don't have, thus, we can only love when we're capable of loving. For all the things that we value such as memories, songs, artists and gifts, that is also how valuable we are - how we see the worth of the things we love is equivalent to how we ourselves matter in this world.
These are just a few of my writings that helped me identify the aspects that I needed to work on for myself, needed to accept and what I needed to learn from. Although this is personal and based on my experiences, you, yes you, are worthy of learning from these. I know we learn differently but I hope every word that makes up this article, at least provides you a broader sense of how to deal with your emotions and thoughts - that journaling is not just writing things down, but a coping mechanism that provides messages to every version of your future self. May you be encouraged to keep going and may you be driven with dealing your inner battles.
