Settle For Worse

I’ve been meaning to write on this topic for a bit now. I just never found the words, and I know that this probably will get back-lash.

I know it seems that this platform is only here for me to bitch and moan on, and I understand a few people’s gripes. I really can assure you, its not.

But I recently watched a video by one of my favorite YouTubers, Marissa Lace, and she explained that we don’t just settle for certain things in our life, but certain attitudes as well.

We allow and settle on being miserable; an impressive amount of Americans today do.

As she puts it, American society romanticizes anxiety and depression and being stressed.

People are put-off by others even having a happy life. It is expected of us to have a shitty time and to be just deeply inflicted with stress and problems that it’s turned into this way of life for us.

“That’s life” is such a limiting phrase. It’s such a joke how much we make ourselves miserable.

If we leave work early, we are the bad ones. If we do too well at the gym, it’s a fluke, if we are happy and cheerful and grateful, we are the stupid ones.

I am a pretty miserable, bitter realist. I always expect the worst to happen, because in my life, normally the worst always has happened. I am caught in this mindset that if I get too happy, something else bad will happen. If I have great expectations, it’s not going to be okay. If I don’t sit up worrying at night, my irrational fears will come true. I only “earned” the happy things in life because I suffered early on. The examples run on.

This is eerily the new norm for societal progress (or in my opinion, regress.)

Either a collaborative group of people who I grew up with all of a sudden are making their issues very publicly known, which is great for them if that’s what works, or they are just trying to move in the groove, trying to broadcast that they have “crippling anxiety” and “bi-polarism” as “look at me, look at me I suffer too,” when it would seem not at all with other information that they actually post. I have a problem with the latter.

It takes away the validity from the people who are actually going through this on a daily basis. It continues the stream of memes, it continues in shows, videos, music, everything that drives our culture.

Do not mistake this as me pointing out and singling out people for this, because I am not trying to. We all have our problems; I think most of us are absolutely more strung up. Be that due to the higher expectations of the job and housing market now, college demands, or this pressing loop of being weird if you don’t have a mental breakdown every week.

There are real life anxiety and personality disorders. Not “can’t talk to the cute boy because hashtag social anxiety.” There is real life depression not “crying and killing myself over not getting a makeup pallet.” There is sadness and despair and pain. I get that. Millions of people are on medications for them.

But there doesn’t have to be for the ones who aren’t. There wouldn’t be this big influx of popularity and glamour to having a shit mindset on life. Stop incubating this in your life. Stop allowing yourself to be miserable.

Life is so good, and so amazing. Everything inside of it is so awesome. We are the ones who make life hard. We are the ones who have to sit in our own choices. We are the ones who bitch and cry over pointless, meaningless stuff. I am very guilty of that as well, don’t get me wrong. I am mainly writing this for myself to just knock it off.

Stop settling. Life doesn’t have to be as dark as we all make it. It can get difficult; sure, there are bad things that happen daily. Fire doesn’t combat fire, only water, only light.

 

Slainte,

 

Jordyn