Sometimes there are moments in which you can’t see straight anymore. As soon as fear weighs the heaviest, realism will be off the scale completely. The positive which usually outweighs the negative does no longer seem to matter. If it’s like this and this, you can either do this and this, but neither works out. No matter what you do, the outcome will be miserable. Even if you know what the right thing is to do, you may make yourself believe that it is not something you want. When I was at this point, my friend almost instantly told me to talk ‘the problem’ out. Communication is key, they say.
Whenever someone comes to me with a problem between him/her and someone else, the issue most often lies within their communication. Both of the sides make sense to me, and often neither wants to harm the other. Sometimes it only seems to be that way because every individual interpreted certain actions in a different way. If someone leaves you alone when you’re sad, this can be interpreted as if this person doesn’t care, but it could also mean that this person is giving you space. If you’ve just entered the dark realms of your mind, you are most likely to assume that a person who leaves you alone when you’re sad does not care. This might make you feel even more sad, desperate, hurt, abandoned and alone, but how can you know for sure that this person has indeed ‘abandoned’ you? Here’s the thing, you often can’t judge a situation all that well if you are in the dark realms of your own mind. In those moments, you can’t see straight anymore.
Once the chain of negative thoughts and then feelings have started, you only continue to slide further down. With every passing second, the available options for solutions become less and less. It needs to stop. The feelings need to stop. While fighting this internal struggle, you decide and know that the ‘fatal’ option of your escape plan is no real option. Still, you need it to stop, you need it to get out.
With a short sentence, you approach a friend to let her know something is wrong. Only if she asks you more than once… and when you know that she is willing to listen to you for sure, you tell her everything all at once. In your eyes, the world is about to crumble and fall apart but when your friend replies, everything seems so much less dark and impossible. Your friend can put things back in perspective and is able to be aware that all you need is to communicate to solve this problem.
In my case, it was communication, but there can be cases when you need something else, something small, to push you back into the ‘sane’ area in which there is neither only joy nor sorrow. Problems can become as big as the dark realms of your mind makes them out to be. Often, problems aren’t all that big. Sometimes you just need a friend to point it out to you; someone who is willing to listen and who does not judge. Someone who sees and knows. Someone who supports you even if that person is on the other side of the world. Thank you.