these words might sound kind of depressing out of context, but when a friend said this to me it was absolutely freeing… I was ramping up to a full scale panic attack, trigger by something I couldn’t identify, scaring the crap out of people around me (or so I thought) — as I was slowly backing away from friendly faces as if they were trying to mug me in a dark alley, all I can remember saying over and over again is “I’m okay, everything is fine.” And through the mist, a voice of a friend, a new friend at that point, telling me that I was okay as I was, even in my not-okay-ness. “you don’t have to be okay and everything doesn’t have to be fine.” it was like someone pulled the power cord from my panic attack… I have been to a lot of therapy and no therapist has been able to diffuse me that fast. I was all of a sudden okay in my not-okay-ness, I was still scared and shook up, and left to try to explain myself, but with the knowledge that someone else understood enough to meet me where I was, and love me enough not to ask me to change or fix myself — that I was enough, even in my unravelled state.
I still don’t remember what had spooked me so bad, I give it an 89% chance that it had to do with diabetes… scratch that… everything in my life has to do with diabetes… but seriously, I don’t even know. What I do know is that this little piece of wisdom is applicable in every single part of my life. Yes, I am happy to report that sometimes I am okay and everything is fine or I am even better than fine and life is fantastic, but remembering that I don’t have to force everything to be okay all the time, or pretend that it is, is a wonderful thing. the end.
