It's okay to be sad.

Really, it's okay to be sad.

It's taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I'm sensitive, emotional- a feeler. It's something that I've hated because I considered emotions, particularly negative emotions, to be a sign of weakness. Growing up, I desperately tried to bottle up my emotions- tuck away feelings of sadness and loneliness, loss and depression, in the hopes that they'd magically dissipate into the abyss, leaving me only with joy and happiness. I didn't know how to face the internal conflict of unmet expectations and life's disappointments. Of course, emotions don't go away until you deal with them. They grow and fester until they bubble over, creating a destructive situation for all involved. That right there sums up my adolescent years.

As I've gotten older, I've learned to recognize my emotions and try to handle them accordingly. Yet, I still struggle with actually being okay with and accepting of them. Now if you're wondering the difference between recognition/admittance and acceptance, there's the best way I can explain it:

Recognition- I see and admit that I'm feeling [insert negative emotion here]. Let me do something to quickly change it because I don't like this feeling.
 vs.
Acceptance- I'm feeling [insert negative emotion here]. Though I don't like it, I have to take the time to deal with it and go through the process.

Though recognition was much better than my ignoring of emotions past, it's still not 100% healthy because I still wasn't fully allowing myself to process through the emotion because I still wanted to avoid the internal conflict of the feelings themselves. So instead, I'd recognize the feelings and spend more of my time distracting myself from it and trying to replace them with happy thoughts than actually processing through everything.

Old habits die hard...

Fast forward to today as someone who is trying to process through the loss of my career and everything that surrounds it. It's hard, very hard. I spend my time shifting between good and bad days and momentary feelings of hope and despair. Life as I knew it has changed, and I have to accept and mourn the loss of that, as well as embrace the new unknown adventure that lies ahead. Where there is faith, there is fear. And where there is so much uncertainty, there is anxiety and sadness.

Monday will make the first time in about 24 years that I'm not preparing to go back to school. It's an extremely difficult reality to confront. I miss the comfort and stability of my life, and the possibilities that were available to me because of it. And now, I have to close that chapter and write a new story.

It's okay to be sad.

The last few days have been hard days, with more difficult days to come. As I prepare for the last battle in this fight for my license this week and what the next steps in my life will be, I can't help but feel a myriad of emotions as I try to process through some very tough life questions and present realities. I know that God's will will be done, and that everything will work in accordance to how its supposed to. In that respect, my worry is lessened because I know that God is with me. But it doesn't mean that the sadness I feel is any less.

In trying to handle emotions differently, I have to keep reminding myself that it's okay to be sad, angry, frustrated, worried... I have to go through the process. I just can't wallow there forever. So for now, I'm learning to embrace the sadness, and pray for better days in the future.