I always thought of myself as calm, level-headed, and unaffected.

If anyone had wronged me, I simply brushed it off as if nothing had happened.

I always tried to understand, sympathize, and be kind to those around me no matter how much they may have angered me. I told people that nothing bothered me. I would receive praise for being so “chill.”

It seems like a wonderful thing to be unaffected in a chaotic world, but is this the best way to live? How could it be preventing you from living a truly meaningful life? How do these walls cause us to feel isolated and alone?

I have always felt like there is something in me that needs to be heard, but I would never give it the light of day. I disregard those feelings for fear of judgment, for fear of others disliking me, and for fear of scaring them away.

What is barricading my inner soul that’s causing me to crumble up my true feelings and toss them in the trash? What am I trying to protect myself from?

Had I fallen into some sort of blissful ignorance and called it resilience? Had I developed a safety net that doesn’t even allow me to walk on the tightrope and take a risk?

What was truly hiding behind my neutral, hard-to-read face? What is so important that it needed to be protected and secured so relentlessly?

I used to tell myself that I was not an emotional person...but as I have grown, I am beginning to realize that I may have been lying to myself all along.

The Journal

At 16, I was living in a state of complacency and consistency. Nothing too exciting would occur, yet nothing too terrible would happen. To some this may seem appealing, but after a while life becomes mundane and ever so slowly it starts to crawl to the darker side.

I was living in a state of confusion as to who I was and where I was going with my life. I had been slumped into a pit of apathy that lacked passion and drive. Every path seemed too daunting to take, and at times I stretched myself too thin.

One day, I decided to go to the store and pick up a journal because I had recently been wanting to improve my social skills. I did not grow up with this gift, so I thought I could train myself. The journal would help me get started with trying to be more intentional with others.

This was, by far, the best decision of my life.

My journal evolved into a place of peace and release, like a warm, cozy room dimly lit by the fireplace. My room used to be a lonely place, but my journal allowed me to finally share the room…with myself.

I started exploring my thoughts as a mansion with many hidden passages and scribbled them onto the page. I started asking questions. Questions such as, “Who am I? Why did I act so rudely to my friend? Why did I feel so nervous and afraid when I was at this event or when I was around this person? Why do I feel stuck? Why am I so confused?”

My heart was poured out onto the page. I laid it all out there…right in front of my eyes. I took my ambiguous ideas and wonderings and made them concrete and physical. I took questions that had been buried deep in my soul and brought them into the world.

The journal exposed things I never knew existed.

Anxiety

Anxiety is something that permeates my life no matter how hard I try to get rid of it. It is the thing that questions my beliefs, my actions, my life. It is the voice that tells me to get out of a situation because “I might make a fool of myself” or “I might make a mistake” or “no one will like you.”

It is the thing that fears questions because they suggest uncertainty…but only if they remain in the vast cavern that is your mind.

Much of your anxiousness lives in your mind. It swims around your everyday thoughts, impeding on interactions with your friends and family and the good work you could be doing to get your life back in order.

It thrives when you let it spread and control you. It wants to prevent you and block you from truly living.

Your mind is a damp, lush, and vibrant place, but if you let bacteria, toxins, and parasites such as hidden jealousy, resentment, and rage linger too long in your paradise, it will begin to grow and infect everything good in your mental garden. It will shift and distort your perspectives on life and cause you to have a tainted view of the world and those around you.

Your lens has been infected and it needs to be cleaned.

Questions?

Asking questions? How does that help?

If you ask questions, you bring your anxieties, fears, traumas, failures, regrets, stresses, and anything toxic that lives in your head out into plain sight.

If you ask questions, you give a name to things that would prefer to remain unknown and unseen…because that is how it survives. If cancer goes unnoticed and unhandled, it will never cease to grow, but once it’s exposed, and especially if it is caught early enough, it has no where to hide.

Writing your questions down in a journal or vocalizing them to yourself or others allows your mind to identify the weeds in the grass. It allows you to get closer to the roots of the issue however deep they go.

Asking questions uproots your anxiety and exposes what’s been truly tormenting your mind all along.

As I questioned and challenged my inner desires I sensed the slippery slope of despair creeping into my train of thought. As a counter-attack, I journaled these words.

“Resort to prayer.”

I usually begin to pray when I feel myself losing my grip on what my life’s foundation is built upon. Prayers of complete submission to God breeds peace into my mind. The idea that I am in control of my life along with the idea that it could be falling apart brews a terrible recipe for disaster. Being able to have the ability to resort to the very one who is in control of it all is incredibly comforting. The spring 2019 season I was in at the time was in dire need of peace and prayer is how I sought it.

“God will be more than happy to help with anything.”

I frequently forget that God is always present with us. It pains me to admit that I forget about the one who cares most about me. Especially as I progressed through the year 2019, I would constantly worry about not being able to perform effectively in various parts of my life. It stirred my anxiety. But looking back I realize now how much I didn’t cast my worries to the Lord. I realize how much I blindly rushed into battle only to shy away at the first encounter. I realize that I wasn’t following my commander in chief with utmost faith. I felt like I had no back up when reality God was right there with me.

Awareness of how much I could be trusting God penetrates my soul. The idea of faith seems so simple. Just trust and have faith right? Well it’s not exactly that simple. That’s like telling someone with shortness of breath just to breathe deeper. Or telling someone who has depression just to get over it. Faith must be built up. You can’t simply say you have faith. You have to get your whole body into it. That’s why sports teams huddle up and chant. It’s because the only way to truly believe you can win is if you put everything you got into faith. Action is far more powerful than anything you claim to believe.

Walking through my journey out of the darkness and into the light is very refreshing. I hope that through what I have been contemplating over the past year, I will be able to extend the light to others who need it. I want to help those who need to hear their thoughts be put into words.

“I just don’t know what to do next.”

Do you ever have that feeling? Times where you can’t think completely straight, fumbling for creativity. At this very moment, I am feeling so I resorted to writing about it.

What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Do you just do something? It seems like an exhausted answer but is it true? Do you really only have to start? Will everything fall into place later?

There are so many questions to answer that it’s paralyzing. Maybe that’s it. There’s too much uncertainty. But is that really why you won’t start? Usually starting something doesn’t require you to take massive risks, or is that what it takes? Are massive risks necessary to doing something?

Still so many questions. Why are there so many questions? What is blocking us from answers? Do we even need answers? Are questions the true inhibitor? Maybe that’s it. Asking questions is not doing, but merely thinking. You can’t do anything if you’re stuck in your head all day. You may be able to answer a few questions inside your head, but you are still sitting on your couch collecting dust because you haven’t moved in weeks.

Feeling isolated in your head can feel scary and claustrophobic. How do you get out of the traffic jam created by your mind? Well, first of all, stand up, but don’t just stand up. Stand up with intent. How do you stand up with intent? Use the gift you were given behind your eyes, and resolve to do something. No matter how stupid that something is, do it. It could be walking out the door, cleaning the kitchen counter, or straightening up your room.

Why does this help? Why does do sometimes seemingly stupid tasks help you get out of your head? Because it’s a shift in what your brain is focusing on. By doing a task it will force your brain to focus on the outside world. This will help you escape the prison in your head you may have created.

This seems counter to what people usually want to do right? Typically people try to escape the pains of the outside world, which can spiral too far to the point where you imprison yourself. At this point, people will fall into depressive and anxious moods because of feeling stuck on the outside of everything. Not feeling like they are a part if this world.

A happy medium is necessary to avoid the trap of the two extremes. So if you are ever feeling stuck inside your head, try focusing on something tangible, something that you can feel and see. This will help you stop the cycle you put yourself in and allow you to finally break free.

Life as a teen is a rollercoaster of emotions. Quite literally because of a delightful experience we tend to call puberty. Chances are, if you ask a teen if they are stressed, they will probably mention the projects they have due at school. Then they will mention how they have been bingeing their favorite shows. Then to top it off they will brag about how they always procrastinate until the night before the due date. Teens can be pretty stressed. And avoidance and procrastination are manifestations of their current states of mind. Why are teens experiencing these unhealthy amounts of stress?

Society today looks a lot different than it did even 20 years ago. Cell phones with internet access weren’t as mainstream as they are today, and the age of information was still in its early adolescent years. Today we have almost all the information you could imagine in the palm of your hands. And it happened in just a span of 10–20 years.

How does this pose problems in our younger generation? Society norms have changed so drastically in the past years. It’s unprecedented how fast society is growing and changing. How does this affect teens? They aren’t necessarily in the workforce yet so how could they possibly have more stress than adults?

You must remember that we are in unprecedented times and people in the past did not grow up in this information-rich environment. It’s safe to say that millions of teens right now are having to physically as well as mentally adapt to how quickly society is growing. The genetics aren’t quite suited yet to handle the plethora of information and modes of life available to teens. Such extreme changes have happened even within teenagers’ current lifetimes. In the past major societal shifts were results of hundreds of years, but now it’s happening in 10–20. This consequently can cause heavy amounts of stress because of the flexibility of younger brains having to adapt to in ten years to what used take hundreds of years.

As society as grown, how have we handled the increase in stress? As history and knowledge became more mainstream due to the printing press and books, people were flooded with new thoughts, histories, and ideas. As a result, it’s made people realize to a greater extent their own humanity and has incited more people to inspect their own lives on a deeper level. By becoming aware of these things it caused them to sometimes over-analyze their own lives causing people to dive deep into anxious anticipation of their future and wallow in regret thinking upon their past.

How have we been able to cope with it? Ironically, in the war against stress and anxiety, we have been fighting knowledge with even more knowledge. However, the knowledge we use as a tool is called wisdom, insight, and understanding. Throughout our lives, we experience many ups and downs. As we experience life we learn from it. This is where wisdom is born. Looking back at life with wisdom is the key to understanding ourselves and the world around us. It’s difficult to have wisdom with knowledge and information constantly being thrown at you. It impairs your ability to sit and reflect on the meaning behind what is known. It’s one thing to know something, but it’s another to understand.

During these transformative times, we are still bridging the gap between knowing and understanding, and it’s taking a toll on our current younger generation, but as society progresses and norms begin to change faster and faster, adaptation is necessary for competing with the progression of the world. This can be a painful truth for some but it’s a truth that can bring hope bridge between knowledge and understanding is almost complete.

Conversations with people are great and filled with insight. Perhaps you enjoy a deep dialogue with someone you admire. There are plenty of reasons why you would want to converse with others, but how could they possibly go wrong?

Well, usually when everyone’s laughing and having a good time someone might slip and drop a trigger word. A word that revs the engine of the receiving party causing smoke to flair from their nose.

Both sides begin to prime the soldiers for war preparing to obliterate each other. They begin to call in the family reinforcements to support their endeavors. There is screaming and yelling everywhere. A total massacre is about to ensue at your dinner table.

Sound familiar? How do family gatherings sound eerily similar to the hottest reality shows?

How do they all begin? How did they end up nose-diving into a toxic pool of words?

When we have a discourse of this nature, we are not thinking rationally. Instead, emotions are the driving force. Inflated emotions will distort your processing, which ends up leading to a more heated argument.

The room starts to become a passionate mess, painful to clean when the guests leave.

Amidst all the deafening chatter, it is impossible for you to completely understand the other person. Neither person is heard so anger begins to swell and accumulate into a ball of outrage and resentment for the people sitting across from you, or worse — next to you.

There are a couple roots to this problem that can be easy to talk about but difficult to remove.

1. Misinterpreting Their Intention

Intention is a huge factor in why humans do what they do. The problem is that people tend to assume intentions based on what is said or done. This is the brain doing work to fit the patterns you see into little categories so that you can easily process complex information.

The tone that you use to communicate, your body language, and your word choice are all considered by those you talk to. These things make up the other person’s perception of you and your intentions regardless of accuracy.

This is why first impressions are incredibly important. This is why being honest and true to yourself is essential to making sure others have an accurate perception of your character.

When intentions are misperceived, however, that’s when things get messy. You might think someone is being nice to you simply because they want something in return based on certain circumstances. This image in your mind of the person talking to you will end up causing you to want to leave the conversation.

Though that might not be the intention of the other person, that’s what it seems like based on numerous factors. This causes tension between the two because they both don’t truly understand each other.

They will feel emotionally disconnected and as a result, will begin to stop listening to one another. This can continue to escalate into tacky remarks, which can lead to quarrels and eventually a full-on debate.

2. Psychological Displacement

There’s an idea in the psychology realm that has to do with the displacement of our emotions. When you experience an emotion but can’t or don’t feel like you can express it at that moment, you will ‘store’ that unreleased emotion inside you, which will build up over time.

Eventually, these disregarded emotions will have to manifest in some way whether or not the method is morally acceptable or even practical. However, you typically will only express yourself when you feel safe to do so.

The most prevalent emotion to be stored up is anger. When you experience the emotion of anger or when someone makes you feel angry, it doesn’t always feel safe to act out on that emotion and to release it.

But when you get home, for example, you will lash out even your own family for the smallest things because you are in a safe environment where you can fully express yourself without very many consequences.

In the book Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, Lori Gottlieb gives a story about her son coming home from school.

She asked her son to go take his shower when they got home late from dinner, but he wants to play, and he’s told that he can’t because it’s a school night. Her son then completely overreacts by saying, “‘You’re so mean! You’re the meanest!’ — which is not like him at all — but also this anger just boils up inside me.”

Lori then lashes back at her seven-year-old son very immaturely and later regretting it.

She also mentions that she had a frustrating phone call with her mother that morning and she realizes, as a therapist, that she’s experiencing displacement, where she projected emotions experienced somewhere else onto others who had nothing to do with it.

It can be hard to realize and become aware that you are doing this, especially if you are in the middle of it. It is typically used as a defense mechanism that will help you not get fired from your job or beat up on the playground.

It is necessary, however, to become aware of those random, disconnected feelings you are projecting onto another undeserving person.

That is why when this happens it is also important to communicate and understand the other person’s perspective even if their behavior was unacceptable. Who knows, you might have misunderstood them.

How to Truly Listen

When listening to someone, especially if we disagree with what they’re saying, most of us can’t wait to jump in to tell them how wrong they are. Even in a group of friends, everyone wants to get the next word, which typically leads to everyone talking over one another.

Why do we do this?

We want to be heard.

Why do we want to be heard?

To be understood.

Everyone can’t be heard at the same time. However, you cannot control what your friends or colleagues are going to do. This might mean taking the initiative on your own.

Listening to anyone that you can.

There are, of course, times when it’s not optimal for you to be listening because of energy levels and comfortability with the person. That shouldn’t take away from the fact that people are growing lonelier and lonelier as the age of social media expands, and the fact that people are begging to be understood.

What can you do? In the loudness and business of this world, what could one person possibly do?

Simply take an interest in someone. Look at their face light up with joy as they realize that you care.

Nestled deep in a sea of self-doubt and confusion, a few days later I picked up the pen and started to write again.

At this stage of my life, I woke long before everyone so that I can enjoy the serenity of the morning, incredibly distinct from its evening predecessor. The serenity of the night is cold and almost deafening to my ears, while the morning is soft, warm, and sweet with the smell of coffee permeating the room.

My pen stroked the page, “So easy it was to talk one-on-one with someone I have never met. Why is the group setting strenuous?”

As I watch myself now unleash some of my inner anger, I see a desire of mine that has had a tight grip on me over the past few years.

The desire to connect with others.

At the time I was okay with meeting one on one with people and had at least an easier time conversing and connecting that way, but it wasn’t enough for me somehow.

I felt the need to be liked by everyone I encountered. If someone showed any sign of distaste, it would devastate me. It would cast me down a pit of despair. It blinds me from all the good in my life. The idea that someone might hate me used to consume my thoughts, and sometimes still to this day.

So many scenarios would fly through my mind. Some positive and comforting but many negative and degrading.

As I have one-on-one conversations my mind is able to focus on a single thing, which my brain seems to like, but when I am dropped into a group setting my mind starts to falter. My mind is plagued with reading people. Every action taken is noted and it overwhelms me when there is more than one thing to focus on.

I feel so incredibly aware sometimes it’s annoying to the point where I have severe headaches after being around people for so long with the wrong attitude. It was almost detrimental for me to stay quiet and observe because more energy was sapped by reading literally everything.

I wouldn’t enjoy myself.

I was too worried about making a good impression and not embarrassing myself that I forgot how to have fun. This very thing has haunted me at work and playing in bands at all churches. I focus too hard on being upright, efficient, attentive, and stable that I totally forget what fun is.

It disallows me to enjoy the people I am around because I make the work not just the primary focus but the only focus. The job should probably be the primary focus, but when nothing is supporting that such as fun, relationships, and comfort, it makes me at least a hyper stressed nut.

“Do I even want to be talkative?”

Why do I desire this? This question was definitely hidden behind the questions beforehand. I wanted to understand my thoughts down to the core, which required me to ask myself the questions beneath the questions.

To answer this I have taken two different types of personality tests several times to see exactly according to the test how I respond to the world. One was the enneagram and the other was Myers-Briggs.

On the enneagram, I had pretty high percentages on all types except for type 8 with type 2 being my highest. And on the Myers-Briggs test, I was and ENFP-T with 69% extrovert, 78% intuition, 90% feeling, 72% prospective, and 67% turbulent. Both tests were taken last year as well as again pretty recently, and I scored pretty much identically, so I feel that these stats accurately display how my mind works.

So why did I desire to be talkative?

Why did I desire to connect with others?

If you wanted to answer simply, then you could say that I was extroverted as well as a type 2 “helper”.

The tests seem to say that I enjoy not just the buzz and excitement of the crowd, but I like to connect at a deeper level with lots of people.

But why did I experience the headaches? Why was I overwhelmed sometimes by masses of people even though I enjoyed it?

Well for one I am not entirely extroverted obviously, and it’s incredibly difficult to fit somebody perfectly within a specific stereotype because of how complex humans are. People will try to fit you into a category because they want something simple to reference because of human nature’s depth.

Personally, it has been a trigger for me when I was put into a category. Stereotypes aren’t bad, but I guess the idea that everything was black and white angered me a bit.

But the desire to connect with people was buried deep within me. So deep probably that it used up all my energy just to create the best impression possible, causing me to never just sit back and relax and resulting in headaches.

“Or is it a false desire only destroying my personality?”

This one kinda makes me laugh because of how desperate I was to gain the knowledge and wisdom I desired. To this, I can answer firmly and confidently that that desire to connect with others has only reaped benefits.

And so, that morning, so soft and delicate, maintained its soothing chorus.

Improvement has been a foggy subject for most of my life.

I seem to be blind to my improvement unless I had documented my previous thoughts or I directly asked someone how I have improved.

As you may expect, it causes a lot of self-doubts and a sense that no matter what you do, you can’t and haven’t gotten better.

“How can I improve?” I asked myself last February.

At that moment I truly had no idea where I was in the improvement chain because I never paid much attention to it in the past. This past year has been eye-opening to where I have become hyper-aware of what’s going on around me.

This can become consuming and cause me to overthink every situation, but if you can harness the fact that you can watch yourself perform without getting self-conscious, you will be able to make massive improvements that other people will start to notice.

I made a contrast in my desperation, comparing the two dynamics of the same problem.

“How does conversation come so easily in a comfortable environment?”

“But strains anywhere else?”

I still struggle with this today, where my environment plays a big factor in how I react to others. Most of the environments I am currently in are mostly with adults, which seems to build a wall with connection for me.

I think the trauma of tennis has affected me to the point that I am afraid to talk to adults sometimes because I assume they will get mad when I don’t perform, and it sparks a heavy emotion when I fail, making me feel like I can’t connect with those authority figures, even if their position in the job is not necessarily the big boss.

Back then it was less clear what I truly struggled with because it was more universal at that time with my overall submissive nature. A nature that told me that people would only like me as a person if I performed well.

If I failed to perform, it ruined my whole day.

Because even though I tried my best and gave it my all, I would still fail sometimes and my tennis coach would still get mad and would say to try harder. That devastated me because there was no way I could hold up to that standard imposed on me.

But there is a light that I see. A light of people closer to my age. People closer to my age in the work environment and environments like that seem to be more open-minded to the fact that we all make mistakes, and that it’s not all about performance. The younger people I have an easier time connecting with for some reason, which is probably normal, meaning I can eventually grow out of this mindset.

Comparing last year from now, I have improved my group interactions with my peers, but it still seems to strain with the older crowd, which I am perfectly fine with because I have friends I can fall back to.

The adults in my life that I struggle to connect with shouldn’t be my main focus. My focus should lie with those that don’t drain me, which is people closer to my age typically.

I think I struggle with needing to please everyone no matter the age or gender, which plays with my happiness in my current situation.

I think I need to recognize that the number of good relationships I have dwarfed the amount of sub-par relationships I experience.

My next question funny enough is, “Do I think too much upon the wrong things?”

And the answer is definitely.

I have had the innate ability to focus intensely on any one thing for an extended period of time, which while that can be a great thing, also can be a terrible thing.

I focus too hard on the more negative leaning relationships, which blinds me from the vast field of positive ones.

“How do I break free from mental solitude?”

I was and still am to an extent imprisoned by the focus and exaggeration I give to my life. I think my focus needs to shift or at least broaden a bit to the amazing gifts God, my friends, and my family have provided for me.

Breaking out of that mindset has definitely been an uphill journey, and I still have not yet hit the peak, but hopefully, I am getting close because it’s still masked by some fog.

And finally, the last statement I wrote in my first entry was, “Note what others do.”

It was a call to action that has been extremely prevalent in my life.

I read and watch how others react and act in current situations and use my discernment to understand why they did that and how I can implement it into my life if I believe it to be a good way of living.

Action is very important to me because while I’m noticing things I could change, I want to immediately start making changes. And throughout the whole of this past year, a lot of changes were definitely made.

Why do I compare myself so fervently to others?

Can it be passed off for striving to succeed, or is it a hindrance that is destroying my self-esteem when in reality the comparison is faulty?

I would watch others while I was out, and would be amazed by how easy they made being social looked. I thought they had superpowers. I thought they were better than me. I felt belittled by the fact that I was so far behind the curve seemingly than all my friends.

I felt incredibly insecure in my own skin that the rare times people would come up and ask a question to me I would choke on my own words because I always kept my mouth shut.

“Why does it seem effortless to others?” I penned in my distress, stumbling to defog my mind and pursue a specific goal.

I was so lost in how to actually go about improving myself, but still, I didn’t ask for support, which was probably my biggest mistake. I had friends and family that would like to help me. Maybe if I had asked for help they would have been willing to act as a catalyst in the process. It’s honestly still a decent idea to ask for help within situations so that we can support each other when the other stumbles.

“Is it really though?” Is it really that effortless? I began to question as I started thinking about how people go about improving their lives.

In some situations people were born with a specific gene and environment that induced a more sociable personality, making their baseline much higher than others. This is true of my close friend, who has been outgoing from the start, while I tend to take comfort in his shadow. A shadow I now want to escape.

“Do others ask these same questions?”

This is a question that sprouted from loneliness. A feeling that I was the only one struggling with intense social anxiety that sapped my energy dry. I felt trapped in my own head. Looking back now I see that my environment had a heavy impact on how I acted and presented myself

I used to play tennis competitively for years. An environment of hard work and commitment, which fits my work ethic like a glove. I gained the approval of almost every coach I encountered even though I said little. Coaches in tennis and even some outside of tennis would latch on to me because of how responsive I was to them, and how quickly I could learn things, comprehending what they would say perfectly.

It was an environment of submission for me. Seeing that now was extremely emotionally damaging to me. I catch myself now getting nervous when others start treating me like a closer friend than usual, and I think it’s because of the scars left by my past coach. Scars of emotional abuse as a result of the submission and lack of confidence to stand up for myself.

But I let it happen. Why?

Why would I let myself be stepped on without consulting others for assistance?

As I write this I realize how much I rely on myself to fix things. I feel like I can handle it on my own. This seems like both an issue of pride and fear. Fear that I would be looked upon as weak and unable, and pride that I am strong and can deal with it.

Emotional trauma was definitely occurring at that time even though I was blind to it. I believe that’s why I haven’t touched a racket since I quit. I have zero regrets and worries that I might have made the wrong decision. My mind feels decided that that was the right move, which goes to show how badly I wanted out.

The only way I could have gotten out was with the help of someone else. Alone I would have caved and it would have ended in disaster, but with the help of my dad, I escaped an inescapable prison where I was sentenced to life.

Asking for help is the only way you can proceed and accomplish what you truly want to pursue. I have learned that we all are limited. We all need a support system that will guide us through the thickness of life.

I am very blessed to have a support system, but my pride and fear blinded it from me. Lacking a support system, while people are controlling you is devastating.

Look around. You have more support than you realize.

Why does it seem effortless to others? Because they have friends and family to back them up when they enter dark times, and they see the immense amount of love that is around them. They make it look easy because they are not in it on their own.

The state of my mind one year ago was of confusion.

My first journal entry had so much thought put into it that I wasn’t aware of at the time. It revealed a lot of what was going inside my head.

I wanted clarity. I wanted answers. But I wasn’t getting any.

At that point, I resorted solely to God and the Bible, myself and my journal. Looking back, if I had discussed these things with others perhaps I would have found answers quicker. I regret nothing, however. Whatever happened, happened. I can’t change it, so I have to be content with where I am because I made the choices.

After beginning with my question, which I believe says a lot about my values and desires, I give myself assurance.

“Do not be shaken,” I told myself.

“Only conform to those held high.”

I remember watching a video about personal development and it said to watch those you admire and imitate the best things about them. I have found that to be truer subconsciously rather than consciously.

Over the past year, I have made mental notes on how I am behaving in certain parts of the year, and I constantly catch myself acting like the people I hang out with, as well as the people in the videos I watch.

Anyway, after this assurance, which I really needed at that moment, I posed a secondary question that I was going about all wrong. This question defined this portion of my life because I felt very inadequate in a lot of aspects of my life. This question is simple but only now can I look back with the answer, wishing I could shed some light on my past self.

“Do I try too hard?”

What a focused question.

A question focused on the wrong thing.

I wanted immediate improvements in my life. I wanted to be understood at once. Only now do I realize that I was thinking backward. Of course, I work hard at what I want to accomplish, but if it doesn’t work fairly quickly and I don’t improve rapidly, I would lose interest.

This fact of my life was detrimental. It is most likely one of the reasons I felt inadequate. The answer that I have found to this confused backward question I asked a year back is by no means perfect and I might look back and change it, but it is this. That the only way to success in your pursuits or desires is consistent practice and deliberation.

You may not see the results immediately, obviously because I am only seeing the true effects now. Life is a long road, and if you take steps to improve your road, you will see the fruits of your labor when the time is right. The key though is to understand that improvement is a process and sometimes a long one.

This is something I didn’t understand back then, and it caused me to feel small and trapped. Being more aware now I understand that I can’t get what I want immediately. I have to have patience. Thank God I was patient with my pursuits because they ended up changing my life for the better as the year went on.

At that point in my life in mid-February, I had just gotten back from One Weekend, which is a weekend event held by our church that’s filled with activities, community, and learning about the Lord. I remember being there. I remember how I felt. At that time I had a lot of insecurities and a lack of confidence. I had such a false sense of how certain things worked that it forced me into the background.

Things like talking to people, speaking up, being vulnerable, and even just having fun. Everything was too important in my mind. Constantly I would overthink my situation to my detriment.

Did I try too hard? Yes. I only confused myself.

However, there is some revelation. If I had not gone through that, how would I have learned? I never learned this stuff in the past, and these aren’t the typical questions I hear people ask. How would I know what questions people asked if I rarely talked to them?

I think experiencing first hand what it’s like to be lost and confused was the only way for me to break out of the trap. That is probably why I started a journal because I wanted to understand myself first. Other people can’t understand you if you don’t understand yourself.

Of course, I knew none of what I said at the time, but whatever sparked the initial actions I took to understand my situation, I would price it above everything I own.

So did I truly try too hard? No, because I needed consistent effort first, but yes because I overthought everything around me. All this being said the clash in my mind, the ambiguity of the past, present, and future, the motivation to journal, and the desire to solve and move forward proved to be beneficial in the later trials to come.

“Why are my words so easily misunderstood?” was the first question I asked when I started to journal my thoughts. I was confused. I thought I couldn’t fit in. I thought I couldn’t go out and make an impact.

My journey to understand and to be understood began almost a year ago mid-February 2019, and I believe it’s been the best year of my life so far. A roller coaster of a year that had its absolute highs, while also kissing the deepest parts of my soul. A year full of joy and despair, growth and loss.

I want to write the journey I went through, and thankfully I documented a lot of it. Even though there are gaps in writing my actual thoughts I still would continue to write in my journal doing various things so you are still able to get a sense of where I was at that point.

There is always a beginning to the story, and my beginning started with chaos. Chaos within me that manifested into these words. Words of confusion and anxiety. Words I look at now with the utmost sympathy for where I was in life.

The fact that I can read and touch the words I wrote a year ago, the very words that my 16-year-old brain was processing at the time, is fascinating to me. If I had not resorted to writing when I was at my darkest, where would I be? I am very thankful for my tendencies because they have served me well as I have continued to grow in every aspect.

My first entry interests me for the very fact that you can tell that I’ve been reading the Psalms a lot. I began with despair and tried to come to a conclusion and sometimes even action. This theme is very present in all the writings of this particular journal.

“Why do the things I say only make sense to me?

Is it of a mental mountain top or does it lie in the dark valleys below?” Here I was trying to decipher whether my inability to engage in compelling conversation was because of too much knowledge, or the lack of it.

Engaging in compelling conversation was a desire of mine that I would constantly fail to fill. I never talked about this stuff to anyone. All the stuff inside this journal has never been read by another person to my knowledge.

I did not have open dialogues with my closest friends very much. There was a reason, but concerning the question I raised, I feel like I have only recently answered it.

A question so fundamental to my mental ambiguity, it baffles me that I just now figured it out. When this idea came to me it was a revelation to me. It gave me chills that crawled across my body.

I had the mental capacity to discuss and discern, which I valued highly, so I thought I could easily improvise my way through school, life, and every conversation.

This was only half true. I had the mental prowess, but nothing to base it on. I had a mental computer, but nothing to process.

I did not read very much, watched little documentaries, podcasts, movies, shows. I don’t fully remember what I did at all at that time or time before. I had no sense of how society works. I never tried to truly process books. They were merely school obligations.

Why did the things I said only make sense to me? Not because the rules of the game were unfair, but because I was playing a completely different game than everybody else. The definition of society is “other people” and I didn’t know very much about them. Stuck outside of conversation because I had little knowledge of even the broadest and most popular topics.

I was isolated, but merely by choice. Thank goodness it’s a choice because where there is a choice, there is change.

Now that I recognize what exactly I was lacking I can take focused action based on that information. I have started watching more movies, reading more books, and listening to more podcasts. I had a conversation about a similar topic with a buddy of mine and he said that’s how he has so much stuff to say because he is gaining knowledge about society.

The scary thing is that I just now figured that out. And you know what that means? It was an entire year of figuring it out. This year was the most chaotic year I’ve ever had.

I am both thankful and hopeful because I am starting to answer the questions that I posed to myself a year ago. Questions I had no answers to. I wasn’t even close to the answers back then, but now I am starting to see the light starting with the very first one.

This has been an amazing journey — a journey that began in chaos.