There Will Always Be Bad Days or Weeks or Months

The past week I missed a couple classes. I know its not something super serious, but missing classes was one of the biggest problems I had at Bryn Mawr. Missing those classes made me feel like I was slowly slipping back to the mistakes I made in the past and it got me feeling like I was going to fail again. Those negative memories I had were triggered by my missing those classes and I felt myself having negative thoughts again: telling myself I'm going to fail, that I'm a terrible student, that the same thing was going to happen again. And to add insult to injury I completely bombed a quiz I had in the same class I missed those lectures for.

But not only did I miss classes, which triggered those negative feelings and memories from my previous school, I also got into two arguments with my sister. I feel like I always have the same arguments with her. Me expressing my anger and bitterness at the church and Christianity, and her telling me that I have a hard heart and shouldn't feel this way, and her preaching at me, which is totally not helpful and actually doing a lot more harm than good. I constantly feel invalidated by her words and the things she expresses and it makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong and that I'm being a bad "Christian", even though I tell her I don't even feel or consider myself one at the moment. All these things combined with the stresses at school really affected me negatively this week and I don't even want to get started on the other argument I had with her.

This week has just been such a series of bad days. I missed crossfit this entire week, I spent an exorbitant amount of money on random stuff, and I missed many classes. These things happening one after the other has really been beating me up emotionally and mentally and I felt like giving up. But the things that helped me most have been my friends.

I am so thankful that I have friends who can love me unconditionally and who are also going through similar things right now, who I can talk to about these things. I value their support and encouragement so much and how they tell me it's okay to be angry and that it's okay to feel these things. Talking to them makes my feelings validated and helps me to realize that, yes, it is okay to feel anger and bitterness and sadness, that these aren't bad things or that they're wrong to feel. I am so thankful that I have my friends who will encourage me and empathize with the situations I'm going through and encourage me without sounding preachy. And who meet me where I am.

Something that one of my friends sent me, a while back, has really got me to think about my faith and to try to understand my suffering better. Even though I feel anger and bitterness towards God, for the things that I've been going through in the past and currently, this video has really helped me to keep that desire to find my faith and desire to believe. I know that it's not going to happen overnight; it's going to be a long process and I think I'm slowly starting to grow and understand (with the help of my friends and counselor of course).