Mental Toughness

Wow! two blog posts in two days go me!

Today I spent seven hours with over 100 strangers at my school talking about our emotions and experiences. And it was actually really cool.

For background:  the whole thing is this little event my school puts on once or twice a year for awareness/ support with mental health. The students sign up and the first 100 get to skip class on a certain day to attend this event in the school gym and eat good pizza and snacks. Of course, it isn’t actually about skipping and eating good, but that’s why most people sign up at first. When we first started, everyone was huddled in their assigned groups of like 10 this big auditorium with a guest speaker waiting to start (Eddie W or smth) and we all looked MISERABLE. Obviously nobody was with more than maybe one friend cause of how groups were pre assigned and the big thing was no phones the whole day (not a big issue for me cause I’m not on it at school a bunch but it sets a vibe, ya know?), and the first thing the Eddi guy did, was have us all do the pencil sharpener dance. 

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Yea we were all like wtf but it actually ended up being a really fun start to our day and we got to be competitive with quizzes and games in along with listening to this really good speaker who almost made a friend of mine cry. Major takeaway of it came later tho, when we moved to the gym. We did this activity, right. They move us all on one side of the gym and say “no talking” and we were told to cross to a line on the opposite end of the gym if we related to the statement the coordinators said. Now obviously this made us nervous. It was the first obviously emotional thing that day, after all. And the amount of pure respect I saw was insaneee (✪▽✪)!! The questions were like “I have been emotionally hurt by a friend”, “I have been physically hurt by someone I love”, “I have self harmed or know some one who has“, “I have spoken about someone I’m friends with behind their back” and “I have been pressured to drink, have sex, or do drugs” and I have NEVER seen so many honest answers to questions like those. Honestly, it was really liberating and set the tone for the whole day. No one judged, no one asked questions, no one made anyone explain themselves, or gave them a strange look. It was just really awesome. Then later the big impact showed. In our small groups again, we played a game called ‘if you knew me, you’d know’ where you say exactly that and something you wanna share that people should know about you. And my group started being really vulnerable with each other without any forcing or encouragement to do so. We shared our anxieties, our past struggles, or current problems with ourselves, and our lowest points right alongside silly things like how we don’t like a certain food or we play a certain sport. It was honestly to coolest thing. Being vulnerable with strangers like that doesn’t happen often, but it’s really good when it does because it lifts a weight off your shoulders in a way. Honestly if anyone ever feels weighed down by their personal issues with no friends to turn to, I would recommend you open up to a stranger you’ll never see again XD. Cause if you never see them, you don’t have to worry about losing them to those secrets, and if you do see them again, they already know and chose to be around you anyway so it’s nice to have that support in at least one person. At the end of all those hours of games and emotions, we did this thing where you get a string necklace and some small strings. The point is to take your strings and tie them to the necklace of someone who made an impact on you that day. It was a really nice way to close it all out for me because everyone could take some time to appreciate each other on a personal level and it made me feel good to look at my necklace after and feel like my being there did something for someone. 

Funny enough at my volleyball practice later that day I came out to a girl I’ve had less than ten conversations with on the fly and it went really well cause she literally did not care XD! Plus our head coach gave a quick talk about mental health the same day and it was all just very coincidental.

TLDR: do something spontaneous, at least in an environment where you aren’t afraid to fail, cause it might teach you something about being true to yourself or whatever (omfg that sounds cringy)

Anyway bye byeeeee!! 

P.S. I feel like I should start calling the nonexistent blog readers smth for sign offs lol , I’m sure there’ll be one next time.