Let Me Be Weak
an essay on resilience, patience, and... sensitivity
Trigger warning: there is a light mention of suicidal thoughts in this piece.
Dear whomever,
I can’t shake the guilt I get from taking days off; when I do, I’m always trying to make up for them; when I do, I’m always upset at myself for showing “weakness”. As though rest is equivalent to that. It is in my head, at least.
I find it hard to forget the voice of our school nurse, who always regarded my sick self with raised eyebrows and she’d insist, “You’re fine - are you just trying to get your mom to take you home?”
In the school I went to and that, unfortunately, my mother also taught in, the structure was more like a family’s. It was small. The teachers were close friends. They regarded me as one of their own, and were always trying to catch me over-exerting my mom, desperate to brand me as a spoiled teenager who was taking advantage of a mothers love. Mom’s are that way. Protective of one another.
I would get sick often throughout high school. Physically. (Mentally, I’ve always been sick.) It was my tonsils. Every half a year or so I’d be bedridden for at least a week, with a sore throat that made sleeping, breathing, and eating difficult. There was always be a series of antibiotics, shots, IVs. Thankfully, every time, I’d come back to school after some rest, fresh and healthy, but a teacher (or even a student), would inevitably say, Were you even that sick? You look fine.
So, early on, I began to second-guess my feelings, to wonder if they were correct to have, to try my best to suffer as long as possible, or suffer publicly, before asking for help. Proof. I must always have proof of my illness, of my worries, of my setbacks. Once, I threw up in the hallway and was rushed to a clinic and then home - they believed me, that day, that I was sick. It was a rare moment I felt certain I was sick, and was relieved to be free of the second-guessing.
In therapy, now, I often say, “I wish I could cry to prove to you how bad I’ve been feeling,” and of course my therapist will say, “You don’t have to prove anything to me,” and I’ll respond: “You don’t understand how deeply I feel like I have to.” I feel I must show her I am meant to be there, that I need to be there. I know why I do this. But I can’t shake it off, that feeling, of needing to perform in some way.
Unfortunately, even doing the right things doesn’t lead you to the correct headspace. It’s why I opened with the story about the school nurse - I know why I fear asking for rest; I was rarely allowed it, it was often questioned.
See, I often say I am a Politically Correct Mentally Ill Person. I know why I am in therapy. I know why it’s important. I follow all the steps one is supposed to when they have an illness like mine. I don’t ignore the nagging voice. Kill yourself, my mind sometimes tells me, and I immediately text my therapist. I am so so good about it. Despite these actions and knowledge, I remain an overthinking mess, shaking often, worried more about what my invisible audience thinks of me, rather than processing what is actually happening.
I’ve always wanted to be happier, it’s why I have “great mental hygiene” - what drives me crazy is that it barely helps, the wanting to be happy. You’d think that’s the only pre-requisite for happiness, but alas, it’s deeper than that. Which I also know. It’s routines, and journaling, I guess, maybe baths, and walks, but even so, with all of it, I’ve only once hit the jackpot when it came to happiness. And it was oh so short-lived.
I don’t often argue with people. It’s not that I don’t believe in my views, it’s just that I’m too obsessed about understanding theirs. I think this is one of my biggest issues. If anything, a validation junkie knows how to validate, of course, which I do often. I am so good at putting myself in other peoples shoes, but all that means is that my own shoes were discarded by the door, forgotten, long ago. It’s almost impressive, my ability to both forget about myself completely and also be constantly hyperaware of my body and actions. A skill: a learned and perfected habit.
I’m obsessed with the way I am perceived. I am feverish about being liked. I am sick about understanding every perspective.
My mother started it, but she takes it back now. When my group of friends ditched me in the sixth grade, she’d say, “Maybe it’s because you’re a bit too sad, lately, and that’s making them sad?” and when my high school boyfriend would revert me to tears, she’d wonder if I “talked too much about my depression with him - you know boys, they don’t like hearing negative things.”
She’s better now. Reminds me that a lot of life isn’t really about me. It just happens around me. Perhaps that’s a lesson she’s learned from raising four kids to adulthood. But she’s relayed it to me much too late; I’m already set deep in my ways. If this habit of understanding was quicksand, I’m already underneath the surface.
It borders self obsession, as my mother often reminds me, and as I spoke on my recent piece i’ve been feasting on myself. I’ve really been trying to unlearn this habit of mine, this desperation about being correct, of understanding the others view points more than my own, but it’s hard when I believe I must wait for the audiences approval for rest. Thing is, this isn’t a way to live. To be human is an inherently selfish thing. Sometimes, internally, I worry I don’t allow myself humanness enough: you know, the anger, the feelings, the openness.
truthfully, i am writing to you from the precipice of failure,
My depressive episode from some letters ago hasn’t truly left me, only loosened its grip enough to allow me to breathe. I, unfortunately, have hit a wall when it comes to my life and all the dreams I had for it. I feel stuck, in this moment, chained to rent and life and the everyday comings and goings of year 24. It scares me, this feeling, this un-passionate un-lovely very-boring life. I have built something good, sure, an apartment and two cats, a comfortable bed, but everyday I drive to work and wonder, Is this it? Is this good enough for me?
This isn’t what I wanted for myself.
The 9-5, the office lights, the heaviness in my chest. I imagined otherwise; my dreams for adulthood surpassed me. I thought I’d be in love, in passion, writing, reading, traveling, exploring. Instead I sit at this desk. I read this report. I wonder about the world and if it’s going to get any fucking worse?
For my graduation project, which I defended in January of 2023, I put together a poetry collection that explored Intergenerational Trauma. The specifics matter little, and the work itself, in the end, is weak (or perhaps I’ve read it so much I’ve become jaded about it), but I remember that period as the most… exciting, busy, passionate period of my life. I remember - despite the frustration and tears that were caused by working on it - I felt as though I’d found the meaning I’d been searching for forever. I felt like I’d found a spark, and I never wanted to let go of it.
My final semester of uni. God, it was so lovely. I was so driven. I was going somewhere, hand on the steering wheel. I was climbing towards the tippy-top of a beautiful mountain and the view was going to be so worth it and then
I just fell.
Job-hunting was the steep downhill I experienced after the high of graduation. It was so difficult. At least one rejection a day. Six months later, I was only depressed, and utterly desperate, and really just wanting to do something good enough and get paid for it. Passion wasn’t a worry any longer, the worry was now that I needed some kind of income - what was the point, then, of graduating first in the Literature Department if I had no job to speak to that?
I will chase the high of working on a poetry collection forevermore. The freedom that came with it. I still write, indeed, but I crave the time and energy I had when I was in university, the drive I was gifted with from my professors. It was a lovely environment, I hold it dear to my heart, my time at university, not for the friends or the people but truly for the pull I had to learn everything I could from the women who taught me. Everyday I wanted to hear what they had to say. Everyday I was, if not excited, then only pleased, to be there.
I didn’t take it for granted, no, I was just pushed to finish, and I finished well, but I still have a certain hunger for academia, for that life, for what-once-was. For advisors. For lecture halls and the little notebook I had of “Amazing Things My Professors Said”. It was exactly where I was meant to be. I understood everything easily. Literature comes to me easy - like extinct. I miss being that good at something. If it was up to me, I’d have never left, just remained in some time loop reading and discussing Emily Dickinson.
I thought this was exactly where I was meant to be, I did. At one point. But it isn’t. And, I guess, the hardest thing you learn as an adult is that you can’t just give up on something. You have to see it through. It’s serious now. It’s a roof over your head. It’s the food in your mouth. The first thing I saw through was that poetry collection, and I loved that, but it wasn’t life or death, then. Worst came to worse, I’d repeat the semester. Now I am faced with something I hate, and it is life or death. It is a matter of surviving. And I have to see it through.
It’s one of the more difficult lessons life has offered me, this strength. I’d like to be weak for once, to be the spoiled brat they tried to paint me as in high school - to quit and sit in the corner of my room and write instead until some miracle comes my way.
There is something tasteless about adulthood, perhaps the movies painted it as a more exciting endeavor. Maybe it’s the people, the friends, the fact that I’m the only one that lives on my own - maybe it’s the fact that I’m the youngest in my office, maybe I expected something more of the work, I don’t know. I always wonder. I always wonder if something else was meant for me, but I didn’t catch it, didn’t see it, so I was never able to reach for it.
What about the other life?
Would it be a better life? You say
Was hoping for a better life than this
I don't wanna wish a life away- Gone, Jorja Smith
i’d like to be something amazing for my younger self,
and I think that often I want to do the amazing thing by proving everyone wrong - proving that my selflessness will pay off, that my depression isn’t what ruined everything, that in the end it all got folded and neatly wrapped into some beautiful, endearing thing.
I think I don’t want to change - I think I am arrogant about it. I know some things I do are wrong, I know the way I think is lopsided, but I just want to tell the world that it was wrong about me, somehow. That the softness isn’t the issue. That my ability to empathize with anything and everyone is a sign of strength. And, sure, maybe Pinterest quotes sometimes tell you that - but is it true? In some ways we must change. In many ways we must allow the world to change us. If we don't - is that even a life? Are we even growing?
It’s hard for me to accept that, I guess. In my eyes change would mean failure, but I should be more okay with failing. The world has been sending me signals, incessantly - so many people are pushing me to be stronger, to be meaner, and I keep trying to prove that it’s unnecessary to build into cruelty. But perhaps… that’s the only way. To survive in this age. To keep on keeping on.
Thing is, I just want to rest, and think about change and strength later. Rest. Not a few sick or annual leaves, not a vacation, just an unlimited amount of time wherein I can do nothing, or something, or anything. Life is walking quickly ahead of me and I am trying to tie my shoes. Can’t it wait? Can’t it pause, out of kindness?
Couldn't anyone else have?
With love always,
Amal
PS: I am always giddy to hear your thoughts. Be sure to write me back.
what I’ve consumed as I worked on this piece, all of which I felt impacted my ideas, journey, and thoughts:
substack:
If you're so smart, why aren't you happy? by
the authenticity industrial complex by
“Are you a greedy woman?” With no hesitation, I nodded by
youtube:
music:
Be Right Back (EP) by Jorja Smith
rises the moon by Liana Flores
Unknown / Nth by Hozier
Oh No by Biig Piig
books:
Severance by Ling Ma
as my pen-pal, i will mail you about four letters a month, ranging between:
a letter about a situation in my life and what it taught me (a personal essay)
a letter i write in one-go that i try not to overthink (a diary entry)
a letter with a piece i wrote and/or published (a poem)
girl you're so strong and do you know that your name "Amal" means hope in Arabic. I hope you find a way out of this. Dealing with depression as a young person is a tough journey but I'm just so proud of you for doing your best. Also, you don't have to prove anything to anyone. Keep writing. You got this habibi<3.
Such a well written piece, Masha'Allah! I am really sorry that your feelings have always been invalidated with growing up. It's like that with depression unfortunately. You put it so well "I must always have proof of my illness, of my worries, of my setbacks". I don't understand why people can't just accept that some people might be struggling silent battles.