This World Mental Health Day marks the 6 year anniversary of starting Mxiety as a blog with live streams dedicated to advocating for openness in mental health. Inevitably, this means nostalgia, introspection, and thoughts about the future have made home in my mind for the time being. Here they are laid out to make sense from

Life is full of expectations. And I think, for the longest time, I didn’t realize that many of them were not mine. As I am turning 30, I reflect on what I have accomplished so far, and naturally, beat myself up for what I haven’t. That is, until I realized that the expectations that were lacking were not things I ever wanted for myself to begin with.

Already, in order to wake up and have a chance at a productive, I need to think of every inch of my body. If I don’t do this my brain will run haywire and might suddenly decide I don’t have enough air to breathe. But hey, I could just smile, right.

You’ll need to go through your journey to get there yourself, but I know you are holding onto a thread of hope that one day you will be okay. Okay is correct, but it won’t come in the form you think okay means right now.

I don’t know what I am afraid of more: darkness, loneliness, or the silence they both can bring with them. Once the lights go off, my brain churns in overtime. The shadows shift into something that isn’t there, and all my biggest fears seem to be real. For me, the dark is the time for each memory to play out anew.