Letter To My Shadows

To my shadows I say “hello”. I know you are there, stalking me. I have followed you closely for years too. You are witnesses of my internal combat but you do nothing to remedy it. You just look at me, impassive … and I don’t understand you.

As you are part of me, I have named you, I hope you like it and that you don’t mind. You are going to call: sadness, fatigue and emotional vertigo.

I have been denying your existence for many years and even fighting against you… But today I realized that I want to hug you and listen to what you have to say to me. After all, if you had never approached me I would not know joy, vitality and courage.

So I reserve the right to make use of you, to hide, to feel bad when something is not fair or when something is not right. I reserve it because otherwise it presses and depresses me.

These are my shadows and they really aren’t that dark. They ask me to understand them and tell me that what I feel is life and that the world is the paradise that I want to create.

Sadness, it’s not your fault that nobody loves you

It is that they have sold us that we have an obligation to feel good and avoid suffering. We have been told that you are negative and that we have to push you away if we want to live a full life.

But I have decided that I want to be your friend, that I can be sad, that it is normal for me to be and that, in fact, I must be from time to time. I never thought I was going to say this but… You are part of me. With you I can be me. Without masks and without armor. I need you.

Of course, I will not hide you anymore and, if necessary, I will shout to the whole world that on my bad days you are with me to help me. You have taught me that not all moments can be good and that I have to learn from it.

Anyway, I am going to explain this to you a little better… It turns out that  feeling bad and believing yourself mentally healthy  or  suffering and living life  do not make good cultural couples. Likewise, if someone thinks of saying ” I feel bad but I’m fine”, they look at them strangely trying to discern what their peculiarity is.

We have fallen into  the trap of demanding an excess of optimism from our lives. We have ignored that we should not learn the lesson without questioning it and, now, we pay the consequences of assuming that  not suffering is a rising value for the account of life and that the correct thing is to move our millions to avoid complications and then ” have life”.   

Tiredness, thanks for letting me know

Tiredness, do you know what is the problem we have with you? That we do not understand that you are coming to spend a few days with us to bring us a message.

“Turn off the autopilot and start cultivating yourself. ” I have your words in my mind, I just can’t find the right way to answer you.

I understand that when you come it is because my body is no longer capable of administering that sedative that allows me to hide the problems and “be a person” day after day.

I promise not to move you anymore and to assist you. I have to leave the fear of life behind when I wake up every day. I will try not to reach my limit so as not to give you too much work.

Vertigo, I’ll drop my chains

Vertigo, it is not your fault that we fear you, but you have to understand that most of us are afraid of heights, especially if they are emotional.

As you will understand, the ropes have become an important part of our day to day. Also, the more they squeeze us, the more difficult it is for us to get rid of them.

Anyway, Vertigo, thank you for teaching me to let go of what no longer belongs to me. Life is much better if you live in freedom.

I promise you that I will work myself and I will allow myself to let go of what imprisons me. After all, the only thing the strings do with me is collect dust.

We all have shadows

My shadows and yours are fighting against the barrage of positive phrases and motivational posters that force them to hide behind a wall of paper and feed on repression.

The sad and the negative need their space in our life because otherwise they will explode and drown us. It is that we no longer have the right to even frown when something bothers us, it is enough to give in to the tyranny and dictatorship of excessive optimism.

Do not allow them to force you to always be happy, because our sadness is the only one that helps us to value joy. If sadness, tiredness or vertigo tell us that something is wrong and that we should worry, it is about something; because if we never felt sad we would not know how to appreciate what it is not to be sad.

Nor does it consist of being pessimistic or melancholic people, only that it is not right that they call our shadows depressive when they are helping us survive.

Therefore, defending our shadows is about accepting ourselves and not rejecting our natural reactions. If we accept that they exist, they will not make us suffer trying to avoid them or frustrate us because every time they find us they hug us with more force.

Therefore, it is preferable to let them enter our house and let them clarify our mind from time to time. Because, if there is someone who does not lie to us in this world, those are our shadows. Because, when we let them pass, they tell us that it is worth fighting because it is worth being happy.

Shadows may be necessary

Because it is healthier “to live thinking that I will feel good even though sometimes I feel bad” than “to live with the obligation to feel good in order to be happy.” All we have to do is admit that there are not only white or black, but that life is full of nuances (as many as our circumstances).

Because in front of the supermarket of reasoning and recipes for almost everything, our shadows scream at us until they make our souls ache. Because they want us to understand that not knowing how to live in the moment or not always wanting to smile does not mean not having a full life.

That is only why we have to reserve the right to use our sadness when we please. Because our shadows do not seek to harm us, but to remind us that we are living a life that has no way back.

It is the moment to abandon the combat that destroys us, accept our shadows as an inevitable part of life and understand that peace only comes when there are no open fronts against ourselves.