I spoke to someone close to me, and they know me to be a positive person; usually, my writing lately has come across as dark to them as I mainly highlight my negative thoughts about myself. Looking back at my posts and the writing I haven’t put out, I realise it can come across as negative despite trying to sound positive. Upon reflecting on my writing, it is clear that there can be some hints of it seeming dark, and I never actually saw it whenever I would proofread it.
I have never intentionally made my writing seem dark – my writing is my thoughts and an open letter to hold myself accountable for what I think and feel about myself and life. I usually find myself to be a very optimistic person who is always smiling. In being that way, I guess my internal thoughts and feelings became the opposite of what I was showing externally.
It has dawned on me that what you perceive to be showing externally may not seem what you think. I have always known many people who can’t hide their emotions through their body language or face, and I have always found it odd that they couldn’t hide it. Looking at my writing has made it clear that this is my way of showing my emotions on my face, and I had no idea.
Usually, being quite positive, I didn’t pay attention to how my current circumstances have impacted me to the point that I am not as positive as I once was. Circumstances change us, people change us, and without thinking, we allow it to happen. It is a basic human instinct to adapt to what surrounds us and to protect ourselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. We either attack straight on and push through everything, ignore and hope for the best, or let it eat away and deter us off-road completely.
For a while, I used to be able to master all three, but for some reason, it mainly became me letting it eat away at me. A current circumstance that has deterred me from being my optimistic self has been my health. Having health problems at the age of 28 is not what I expected when I was growing up or even predicted for myself. But life tends to show you and put you in your place when you most need it. Do I wish I had taken my health more seriously when I was younger? 1000%. As I have said before, life is a learning curve, and we learn from every mistake. What we do with the knowledge we learn from our mistakes matters more than the lesson itself.
Letting my health problems cloud my personality and my mood, making things darker for me, is no one else’s fault except my own. I am in control of how I react to my circumstances. So, I have to make the changes to stop it from affecting me.
There is darkness within everyone; everyone has dark times, but how we let those times affect us is what matters. I would be lying if I said that dark times haven’t been that bad for me because it has. There was a time when I wasn’t sure if there would be a tomorrow for me, and I vowed never to let myself get there again – and by the Grace of God, I haven’t.
There were times when I used to say that through our darkest days, there will always be brighter ones that make our days easier. This is something I have said to myself and people I am close with from time to time. It is something that I haven’t said in a while, though I can’t remember the last time I said it to myself or anyone else. I think it is time for me to remind myself of this, to make the changes to make the dark days brighter.
When negative things happened around me, I remained optimistic no matter what occurred; I always saw the bright side of anything and everything. Negativity scares me. To be frank, it sends a shiver down my spine to think negatively about anything – so when I start to doubt myself and question things, I start to feel myself become negative, and I know that I am no longer myself and see things around me and in my life get dark. My mind gets clouded, and I begin to lose who I am.
Many people tend to be negative and disguise their negativity as being ‘real’. I can honestly say that it is far from being real. When negative people project their negativity onto you, it is them deflecting their thoughts about themselves. I’ve been told that my optimism takes me away from reality and being realistic. Whenever I used to hear that, I started to believe it because what if I wasn’t being realistic? Why am I so optimistic? When I believed it, my doubts began to sink in and caused me to be pessimistic about everything and second-guess everything.
Everyone will have an opinion, a thought, and a belief about you. Only you can decide whether you will let it affect and upset you. Someone’s opinion can dimmer the light you shine into the world.
I want to make everyone happy as much as I can – when, in reality, I know it is impossible to do it 24/7. You can’t make everyone happy, especially those closest to you. You can only do your best. I try to be the brightness in people’s lives and make their days easier the best way I can by being myself, smiling and helping them as much as I can – and I will continue to do that.
That said, before attempting to make everyone’s day brighter and better, I need to work on myself to make my days brighter and remain the optimistic person I know I am and can be.
In the UK, it is that time of year when it gets dark at 4 PM, and everything is dark and depressing. I just want to say that the sun doesn’t determine the brightness of your day; you do.