What A Time To Be Alone
A Diary-Zine created by Chidera Eggerue - a recovering hypocrite. It’s here to remind you that no matter where you find yourself in life, you will ALWAYS have to face your truth. All of it. You’re not alone, you’re not crazy. Your feelings are valid and it’s time to make peace with them...all of them. It’s time to stop being scared of feeling things and its time to start talking about them.
Human beings have been designed to disappoint. That’s the brutal, sad reality. It’s a pretty bitter, large pill to swallow but once you finally come to terms with this truth, life won’t hit you as hard anymore.
The thing about human beings is that we treat others the way we feel about ourselves - most of the time, we don’t even realise. This is why it’s important to learn to not internalise the way people choose to treat us. If like me, you’re one of those SUPER-SENSITIVE people who genuinely dies a little more inside every time someone takes advantage of your kindness or pretty much ignores your existence whenever they feel like, you’ve got to remind yourself that nothing is ever really that personal - even kindness; it’s all a reflection of how that person is feeling about their self. So if someone ever decides to be a prick to you, don’t bother yourself with the emotional turmoil because they’re fighting an even bigger battle with their self.
Nobody who truly loves their self allows their self to project any negativity onto another human being. It does not get any more simple than this, my friend.
Having said all that, we all carry the tendency to be pricks from time to time - especially to people we love. Over-comfort creates room for us to take people for granted. Remind people you love them more often. And try to remember their allergies.
People sometimes run away from us when they discover the dark past that has shaped the beautiful light that attracted them to us in the first place. It took a while for me to understand that people run from the same things they’re running away from facing in themselves. When you make the effort to learn to understand yourself, this makes it a lot easier for you to understand other people.
People who run away from themselves always run away from other people in the most subtle to extreme ways. You may have experienced people who crash into your life like a wave then suddenly disappear like a retreating tide. It’s the most draining thing to be fond of someone who is only fond of you when they’re bored. But one thing that’s important to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t cling onto how nice they selectiviely are to you as a justification of why you should allow them to continue treating your life like a hostel. Observe the fact that they repeatedly make the choice to flake on/disappear on you with no remorse. Anybody who does not respect your time does not respect you.
It can be terrifying to ever open up again to someone especially after you’ve experienced rejection of who you are in the past. But the trick is to share yourself in ever so tiny pieces so that you can guage how much the person you are sharing yourself with respects your story.
Sometimes, people just don’t deserve to know us like that.
When it comes to healing, take as LONG as you need to get over ‘it’. To grow past it. To no longer let it have power over you. Thanks to social media, there’s this overwhelming pressure to look like you’ve ‘moved on quickly’; there’s almost this invisible competition and whoever cares less, wins. Be as fragile as you need to be. Stop looking at their profile. Block them. Mute them. Even when you feel tempted to still have a snoop, remind yourself that you are searching for validation in the wrong place.
The process of ‘getting over it’ is tough because it involves you unlearning habits and weaning yourself off an environment you are so familiar with. You must understand that this is not easy for ANYONE. A lot of the time, what looks like someone else moving on quickly is actually just a bunch of vital emotions shoved away in a mental attic. Some people are really good at running away from their feelings. But the thing about running away from your feelings is that you are actually running in a very large circle...you will eventually meet yourself at the start. Your feelings will eventually hit you. If you’re running, you are only kidding yourself.
Learning to process every emotion for as long as your body needs to is the only way to heal. Honesty with self is the best gift you can reward yourself with. Because being in denial only harms you further in the long run. Don’t be ashamed if you feel like it’s taken you longer than it ‘should’ to appear to have ‘gotten over it’. Our emotions have no expiry date. They will stay with us until they have served their purpose in our lives.
Comparing your healing time to someone else’s will only prolong your healing. We all have different pain thresholds. Some of us are also better at hiding the way we feel than others. But we are all human and we all bleed, cry and piss the same stuff.
There’s no shame in pain. Feel it all and remind yourself that whatever it is that you are feeling right now - be it happiness, sadness or even boredom, is temporary and will pass like the seasons do. You’ve got this. Keep your head up, stay strong. It’ll get better soon.
They flake on you when you make plans to meet up; either they ‘forgot’ or ‘something came up last minute’. But this doesn’t happen once; this happens enough times for you to recognise a very complex pattern that spells out ‘I don’t really care about you, I care about how you make me feel when I need to kill some time but right now, I’ve found something more important to involve myself in so I’ll drop you and pick you up if/when I feel like because I know you’ll be there waiting on me’. People don’t flake on what they believe is necessary. Even if something genuinely comes up, they will give you enough notice but also make an effort to rearrange to meet up and fully follow through with it. Not flake again. If you can relate to being on the receiving end of this, don’t bother responding to that person anymore if your relationship with them can be minimised. You deserve to spend your time with people who value it. Remember: anybody who does not respect your time, does not respect you. If you feel like you’re a flake, quit being a flake. A lot of the time, flakiness comes from heavy anxiety. As someone who has dealt with very serious anxiety, I’ll let you know this: you’re better off keeping your distance and being consistent with that, than flaking here and there and only being known as an inconsistent person. Ever been in a situation where you are friends with someone you consider a close friend but all of a sudden, they suddenly stop congratulating you on your achievements like real friends do? As much as external validation is not something we should be reliant on, it is important to keep in mind that someone who calls their self your friend is someone you should be able to share your joy with; someone who encourages you to go for it; someone who reminds you not to give up; someone who cheers you on. If you are beginning to notice that your friend no longer plays a supportive role in your life, it’s important to understand where this sudden change of energy has come from. It’s a tough one to admit to yourself, but they may simply be jealous of you, especially when you are always coming to them with good news. This can sometimes create jealousy because you are reminding them of what they wish they could achieve.
No matter how much it hurts, no matter how embarrassing it feels. Grow through it. Let it teach you. Every situation that does not work in our favour is there to show us a side of us that we really needed to see. If you aren’t losing, you aren’t learning.